As some of you may know from Facebook or online book clubs...our landlord had a fire on their wooden firescape a month ago. NO ONE WAS HURT. At that time, our apartment seemed to escape unscathed. However, they had another fire 29 hours later...and our apartment got the brunt of it as it began in the basement below us and came up through the pantry. I thought I would share pics here for those of you I know who are not on social media.
With the second fire...our apartment got smoked out. Still...no one hurt as none of us was around, it happened at 3 in the morning and we had all left the building two days before. As you see in the pictures...they really tore up the place. I began the salvage of our art work and books. I had culled a lot of our bok collection over the pandemic as a project to "download" our stuff. But we kept all our art history books, artist books, and my research books (which are pretty expensive) So for the past four weeks...every day weather permitting I wentinto the old apartment and used "chem sponges" to wipe down each book and each apinting.
During the first fire, at 9 pm the firefighters putting out the blaze on wooden fire deck.
You can see the chem sponges on the table...they are vulcanized rubber latex. Very effective. They remove the soot which is the source of uncomfortable smoke smells.
The next day after the first fire.
Our pantry after the second fire.
The pace was rubble after the second fire was extinguished.
I have completely salvaged what I could...most of our art work and most of the books. Our collages were more vulnerable as they are often made out of paper...so one can't wipe off the soot. But we feel very grateful to be safe and we have found a place to stay a block away...which I will post pics of later today or tomorrow.Above is the dumpster...which demo crew filled up completely last week by Friday. We are officiially out of our old place.
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