This happened about two weeks ago. And I almost forgot about it till I saw the picture again today. It was late at night sometime after 1am on a Sunday morning. We all decided to retire to bed after a really long night of chatting. We had two mates who flown in all the way from Australia and were staying over at ours for a couple of nights.
The balcony is situated right outside our bedroom window. And usually we do not lower the shutters (yeah the window shutters as I call it) all the way, making sure to leave a small gap at the bottom for ventilation. I sleep on the side of the bed right next to the window. Just as I was putting my head down to my pillow, I caught a sudden sweet smell coming from somewhere. It smelled like something was burnt. I was making a joke about someone burning cakes in the middle of the night.
The smell did not go away... so me and my fiance did a thorough search to make sure that there was nothing burning in our flat. Nope. So I drew the shutters and I saw smoke.. not lots of it.. but puffs of smoke coming from somewhere below. We headed straight for the balcony and stuck our heads out for check for any source of fire. Nope. But we could see more smoke and really strong smell of something burning.
What happened next was.. my frantic fiance rang up the fire department. Within minutes, two fire engines and about 10 firemen got out of them with equipment and all pulled up below our building. 5 of them dashed them with a water hose. One came into our flat to check out the smoke. When the source was identified, the firemen sprinted down the stairs and we could hear a loud hacking sound. Like someone breaking down the door.. Minutes later, we heard the firemen shouting at an old lady (in Croatian): "Do not do this in the future! It's dangerous!"
What we understood was.... we alerted the entire fire department that night. Thank goodness that they were the most efficient firemen ever seen and their professionalism (all equipped) even though we told them we only saw smoke and no fire. We had a good laugh as we felt silly for causing the false alarm. But who knows....
The balcony is situated right outside our bedroom window. And usually we do not lower the shutters (yeah the window shutters as I call it) all the way, making sure to leave a small gap at the bottom for ventilation. I sleep on the side of the bed right next to the window. Just as I was putting my head down to my pillow, I caught a sudden sweet smell coming from somewhere. It smelled like something was burnt. I was making a joke about someone burning cakes in the middle of the night.
The smell did not go away... so me and my fiance did a thorough search to make sure that there was nothing burning in our flat. Nope. So I drew the shutters and I saw smoke.. not lots of it.. but puffs of smoke coming from somewhere below. We headed straight for the balcony and stuck our heads out for check for any source of fire. Nope. But we could see more smoke and really strong smell of something burning.
What happened next was.. my frantic fiance rang up the fire department. Within minutes, two fire engines and about 10 firemen got out of them with equipment and all pulled up below our building. 5 of them dashed them with a water hose. One came into our flat to check out the smoke. When the source was identified, the firemen sprinted down the stairs and we could hear a loud hacking sound. Like someone breaking down the door.. Minutes later, we heard the firemen shouting at an old lady (in Croatian): "Do not do this in the future! It's dangerous!"
What we understood was.... we alerted the entire fire department that night. Thank goodness that they were the most efficient firemen ever seen and their professionalism (all equipped) even though we told them we only saw smoke and no fire. We had a good laugh as we felt silly for causing the false alarm. But who knows....
