As I sit down to write, I try in vain to remember what I did just 10 days ago. It was a Friday, so I assume I went to the office, did the radio show at the smoke shop and saw Lynn, but even though it was only 10 days ago, the details are just not there in my mind. And yet at the same time, I can recall vivid details of a night 10 years ago. I guess it's pretty easy when it is a night that changed my life forever.
Ten years ago tonight into the wee hours of the morning, I slept through and escaped the fire at Seton Hall University. It was my school. It was my building. And it was my floor: the Third Floor of Boland Hall. It was a night of firsts for me and sadly a night of lasts, including the last breaths for three of my classmates.
The night before was one of the first big basketball wins of my college life. I couldn't make it because of a night class but I followed along as Sammy Dalembert and company defeated a tough St John's team in a pivotal game en route to an NCAA berth. Later in the evening, I had one of the best talks ever with my roommate. Brendan and I had lived together for four months or so but that night for some reason we ended up having a great conversation. I remember staying up until 3AM talking about anything and everything in a great "getting to know you" moment. An hour and a half later we were awake again.
The fire alarms started going off sometime around 4:30 or so. Brendan and I both acknowledged the noise with the obligatory swear word and pulled the pillows over our heads. It was a cold January morning and there was no way we were going outside. You see, a month earlier during final exam week, we had close to 50 false alarms as pranksters put in the finishing touches of their frat pledging. We slept through the alarms in the past, we would do it again. Or so we thought. When the sounds of the alarm became drowned out by the sounds of running and screaming, we knew it was time to leave. When I opened the door to a wave of smoke, we knew it was time to leave NOW. After a few hours of being bounced around from building to building, I finally settled in to my home away from home. Being a work study in the Communication Department gave me a set of keys so while the entire freshman class sat in the cold cafeteria, Brendan and I set off for the TV Studio. It was surreal to turn on the News and see a live chopper shot of the building that I was sleeping in only a few hours before. It was alone in this room, while Brendan slept on a couch nearby, that I learned that this fire was fatal. This nightmare was real.
I was fortunate, though. All of my friends were accounted for and with the exception of a little smoke inhalation, I was fine. We were allowed back into the building after a week and after a few loads of laundry you could barely make out the smell of smoke. Let me correct that statement. Physically I was fine. Emotionally, I would never be the same.
It was sometime during the week that I was home, I found myself in my grandparents' kitchen reading the newspaper. It was in this particular edition that I saw a detailed map of the third floor and where the fire took place. It wasn't until this moment that I realized that I very possibly had been saved by a door. Boland Hall was made up of two wings that were connected by the Bridge, a short hallway and dorm rooms. At one end of the Bridge was the lounge, where three couches were engulfed in flames that measured close to 1500 degrees within five minutes. At the other end of the bridge was a door, and just outside of that door was the door to my room - 323 South Boland Hall. I don't consider myself having a near death experience. I never thought of myself in grave danger, even as I exited the building in a thick fog of smoke. But as I looked at the map, and realized our close proximity, it definitely made me think, especially when I saw that at least one of the young men who died was actually further away then I was. What if my room was on the other side of the door? What if that door wasn't there? Not a day has gone by that I haven't thanked God for something as simple as a door.
At the end of the day, I am just one of the hundreds of people who made it out all right. Sure, within a day I was in the hometown paper and on the Evening news but my story is not a special one. But my story allows me to tell the tale of Frank and Aaron and John, who weren't fortunate enough to tell their own story. My story allows me to honor the countless heroes that night, from emergency personnel to school staff to fellow students who did their part to help.
I think about the events of that night on a daily basis. I think about the hell my parents went through when they couldn't get in touch with me for hours. I think about the hours I spent in the police station reliving every detail. My story was so accurate that years later I was scheduled to be a key witness in the trial. Luckily the 2 accused copped a plea before it went to trial, so I was spared the anguish of reliving it yet again in court. They were given a maximum of 5 years in prison for their crimes. You would think that 3 dead, 58 injured and hundreds of lives changed forever would be worth more than that but this blog isn't long enough to dissect the workings of the judicial system.
A few years after the fire, I heard a student complain about a fire drill the night before. It kept her outside for a good hour, she said. I really had no patience for that and I told her as bluntly as possible that I didn't want to hear it. I once had a fire drill that kept me outside for a week, and three of my classmates never made it back inside.
So on the 10th Anniversary of that fateful night, I will do my three shots, as I have done every year since. And I will think about Frank and Aaron and John and all those affected by the events of that night. And I will do the only thing that I can do - I will REMEMBER.
