The words of a friend.

How to behave in case of fire.

In any extreme situation, including fire, the main thing is not to panic.

In the early 1970s, I was still in school, we lived in the ninth floor. There were four apartments on each staircase. On our, besides us, in two apartments lived old women, who rarely visited home, and another family: dad, mom, daughter, who was a few years younger than me, and a little dog. What my mother was doing - I don't remember, and my dad was a marine geologist, engaged in marine oil exploration.

On the upper floor lived a man who usually went out to smoke on the staircase and threw cigarettes down to our floor. It could not end well, and it did not end.

That day, my dad and I took my grandmother to the clinic and my mother stayed at home. When we returned, the women who lived on our staircase cage tried to wash off the walls.

The neighbor from above threw a thinning straw down, and from it the dermatine covering of the door of our neighbor-geologist burned. The fact of the accidental fire was never proven, although firefighters found the hose, and no one smoked on our staircase cage. My mother was about to go out to throw the garbage and before opening the door, she looked in her eyes. Seeing the fire, she panicked, for some reason went to the bathroom, closed the water, and then ran to call the firefighters. In the same state of panic, she first went to the ambulance. The ambulance told her which number to call, and she called the fire department. By this point, she was already so enchanted that she and the address could not say, but the operator, having asked a couple of suggestive questions, understood where she was calling, and said that they had already left.

And they left because the firefighters had already called the neighbor-geologist. With that sixth sense, he realized that their door was burning, looked in the eye, convinced himself of the correctness of his arguments and organized everyone. The woman told her not to open the entrance door in any case, otherwise the passageway would pull fire into the apartment. Instead, he told his wife to water the door from the inside. The daughter told her to take the bathtub on her hands and move on to the neighboring balcony. In our houses there was one balcony for two apartments with different entrances, separated by a small partition. He himself took the phone. He first called the firefighters, then called the neighbors from below. But he did not start screaming about the fire, but first apologized for the call at the untimely time, asked how they were doing and only then said: by the way, we are burning, come to extinguish us, and gave instructions how to do it.

By the time the firefighters arrived, the fire had already ended. Firefighters only broke the door of the missing retirees, as it crumbled, drafted a protocol and left.

This "main thing without panic" applies not only to fire.