Hi everybody,
Baldwin Oaks Apartments was evacuated Thursday June 2nd
What happened was we had the owner's here and/or HUD doing a yearly
inspection. Somebody turned off then on power to the elevator's and when the
they turned everything back on, it shorted out the entire power source that
supports all 3 elevator's, all the lights in each stairwell, the 2 laundry
rooms, half the lights in the hallways and half of the air conditioning
system. Every individual apartment unit had complete power though. No fire
alarm went off but the fire doors were automatically closed.
At 1:30 in the afternoon I got a pound on my door, Pete and I were both home
when 2 EMT's asked if we were alright, that the emergency pull cord system was
activated in my apartment unit and a bunch of other unit's randomly in the
building. We all went out in the hallway when Pete said "I smell smoke" that's
when the fire department was called.
I'm not sure of the timeline for much of the afternoon but there were at least
6 or 7 fire trucks with 40 fireman, 2 EMT's and maybe 10 to 12 policemen.
EVERYBODY in the building, 364 souls, were told to go to the common area's, the
closest exit or outside - that God it was a beautiful sunny day, not to hot.
Sometime around 3:00 or 4:00 the town deemed "the building unsafe and an
immediate mandatory evacuation." the Red cross was called in to set up 200
cot's to be put up at the community center and they were also preparing food.
Now try to imagine senior citizen's with mutable physical impairment's using
scooter's, walker's cane's, oxygen, even some here in hospice, then people like
me in power wheelchair's on every floor? Also, there was the language barrier
with resident's speaking Chinese, Russian, Italian and Spanish. Each person had
to have a policeman or fireman escort them to their apartment so they could
call family or a friend to spend an unknown amount of time. Then we had to pack
whatever they are going to need like medication's, cloths and to do it all in
haste and under extreme pressure.
I had no where to go, my Mom's place dose not have a hospital bed and no
hotel's in the immediate area have hospital bed's (I am right now contacting
corporate headquarter's of the Hilton, Sheraton and Embassy Suite's to suggest
that they have ONE room that has a hospital bed). A young girl, Dawn from the
4th floor, who is a quad also had nowhere to go. She is request to have her
apartment moved to the first floor and 2 other's who are in power wheelchair's.
At around 8:30 after me, Pete and Dawn got back from the pizza place across
the street (while we were there they got an order for 40 pie's for police and
fireman) they, the large group of town's people gathered around the mobile
command vehicle, decided that all first floor resident's could return back to
their apartment's because a group of young handsome fireman were spending the
night. With the elevator's still out of order Dawn spent the night with us.
Then the light's in one of the stairwell's was repaired so anybody that was
able to climb the stair's and lived on the upper floor's were now allowed to
return home. By 2:00 Friday June 3rd one elevator was now working so everybody
could return home.
With all that went on, I only know of one man that had a heart attack. I am
pretty darn proud of how this town came together and helped those that needed
it. We all here at Baldwin Oak's were minority inconvenienced compared to
flood's, fire's and tornadoes'. Bobbie
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