I don't want to brag or anything but last night I saved our neighbors (and our) lives.
Okay forget it I am totally bragging!
Last night we were headed to bed at about 10:30 when I realized that I had washed our bedding and forgot to get it out of the dryer. We were pretty tired and Joey said why don't we just sleep with some blankets and worry about it in the morning. Step in hero Whitney. Haha. Anyways...I said it won't take very long.
So I went to our doors that hide our washer and dryer and when I opened them I told Joey that I smelled natural gas. So he came smelled it. Turned off the gas that goes to our washer and dryer (yes I know weird they are gas and not electric). I checked our gas stove to make sure none of the burners were on by accident. Nope not the stove. Then he went outside to get fresh air and came back in to see if our whole apartment smelled. It did. I tried it too. DEFINITELY smelled.
I got Brinlee out of her bed put a hat and a blanket on her went outside with her and we called 911. Well all of Rexburg wanted to come. Jk, but really was there a need for a fire truck, a regular truck from the fire department, two cop cars, and an ambulance? I don't think so. Anyways we heard the sirens and I laughed, oh great they have their sirens on now all the neighbors are going to wake up.
The nice fireman asked if we wanted to sit in the back of the cop car to keep our baby warm. As a matter of fact we did.
And I told Joey we had to take pictures since it was all our first experience in the back of a cop car.
Don't be alarmed by the horrid quality of the pictures all we had was Joey's phone on us with the night vision on the tiny camera...better than nothing though.
Do you see that bright spot of light in the picture? Right below it, that's a gun.
I know the night light makes us look a little creepy
We had to make sure you knew we were all back there.
We waited in the cop car for a while nice and toasty warm. Then the fireman came out to talk to us and told us there wasn't anything leaking but that we shouldn't have as much stuff in our furnace room as we do. whoops. But they didn't really say that was the problem...so we waited some more.
He came to tell us he was calling the gas company to come check all the apartments in the building before proceeding.
Great all the neighbors get to be woken up anyways. At this point I was really hoping that whatever it was, it wasn't our fault.
He came back with some crazy news.
The neighbors below us had left their gas stove on MEDIUM and it had been like that for a while considering by this time it was past eleven and they told us they had gone to bed at nine.
So all four apartments in our building were woken up and told to open all their windows and front door and the nice gas company man took over and the rest of Rexburg's emergency crew left.
When the nice man came in to talk to us we asked him some questions like would the apartments have blown up if those neighbors had turned on a light or something since their apartment was so bad? And he informed us that there is a small window that the gas levels have to be at for anything to ignite like that and that the neighbors apartment was WAY above that level.
Oh good. So you know what that meant. They would have just never woken up because their was so much gas that it would take away all their oxygen. YIKES!
So in short, I totally saved their lives!
We of course got out of the cop car and went up to talk to our friends that live right across from us. We sort of camped out in their living room while we waited until the guy got the gas levels low enough that he could turn back on our heat.
It started to get really really cold. The thermostat was reading 50 degrees. Not that cold really but when you are inside and all the windows are blowing more cold air on you it feels a lot colder. And we could totally see our breaths...inside!
We bundled Brinlee us really good though she was nice and comfy.
(Under that really warm minkee blanket is another warm blanket and she is in a fleece PJ, swaddled)
Then I had to put the blanket over her face and leave a little tunnel for air so that her tiny nose and cheeks didn't get cold.
And I loved all the heat she was giving me while I held her :)
Brinlee was a champ the whole time. When I brought her outside of course she woke up but she was just staring and taking it all in. She did the same thing in the cop car. When we were hanging out with Ben and Hillary she was just as content. She started getting a little tiny bit fussy if you can even call it that. So I gave her a bottle and after that she fell back asleep and slept through our chit chat. What a good baby!
And she got compliments on her cuteness and chubby cheeks from the emergency crew :)
So I guess you can say we're sort of hero's around here. Well Joey said to me good thing you have a nose for natural gas (it wasn't the first time I smelled it when no one else did). So I like to take a little bit more credit but that's just for fun :)
WOW! Sorry that was tortuously long.
