Had a bit of a scare this morning!

As I woke up not feeling all that great this morning I decided to work from home today. I live in a high rise building, fairly near the top. I have a balcony which I use rather a lot during the nicer weather months. When I'm home the balcony door is usually always open unless it is too windy or rainy and this morning it was wide open as usual.

So, I'm sitting here at my computer checking my work email after 10 or so and all of a sudden I started to smell something rather nasty - kind of like a bad, old grease kind of cooking smell so I get up and go out on the balcony to see if the smell is coming from out there rather than maybe coming in from the shared hallway. Sure enough the smell is quite strong out there so I turn to come back in and close the door when I detect the smell of buring plastic ............ what the heck????????? I go to my railing and look down and I do a double take because I think I can see wisps of grey smoke coming from the balcony directly below mine!!!!!!!!! I picked up Muggins, my cat who had followed me out there, and dashed back in the door and grabbed my phone and hit the speed dial button for our office here and told them I was pretty sure I could see smoke coming from the balcony directly below me - she said okay, they'd deal with it and call 911.

I turned to look and the smoke was certainly more visible wafting up from below and the building fire alarm now starts to go! Now this is probably the wrong thing to do but I dashed out onto my balcony and grabbed a couple of boxes of paper recycling stuff and brought them inside as I was worried that they'd catch if there were sparks/embers or whatever ........... and when I turned back to face the balcony windows I saw a ball of smoke and flame rise up from below at the other end of my balcony ............... and then about half of my pigeon netting was gone and much of what was left is melted! Talk about being freaked out!!!!!!!

I threw on some clothes and grabbed my bag (and all my ID, passport and credit/debit cards) and started to look for my 3rd cat as I was thinking we may have to leave ............. when the voice of a fireman comes over the intercom system to say that they are investigating a call on the 22nd floor (I'm on 23) and if we haven't already left our apartments that we are to stay where we are. By now, I've got 2 cats in their carriers with the 3rd one on a leash in the bathroom with the door closed so I keep an eye on my windows to see if the smoke is any worse (it's wasn't thankfully) and figure I'd best wait for further instructions from the fire department. Within a few minutes they make an announcement that all has been cleared - WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!! They arrived very quickly, thankfully I'm only about 1 1/2 blocks away from a fire hall

I then called the office to ask if it was indeed the apartment below mine and was told that yes it had been ........ that the woman had been out on her balcony cooking!!!!! WTF??????? These are the same people who I had reported last summer because they were using a charcoal BBQ with BBQ lighter fluid (which I could easily smell) such that I could see the orange glow of the open flames as I looked down as well as hear the "whooshing" sound that the flames made as they rose up as they sprayed the fluid onto the charcoal!

I mentioned that my pigeon netting had been quite badly damaged and the lady in the office said that she wasn't surprised as she'd gone out the door as soon as I'd phoned and looked up and had seen the fireball that had done the damage ........... she also said that she was glad that I hadn't been out there looking over the railing at that time! ME TOO!!!!!!!! Anyway, I told her that I wanted my netting replaced and that the tennant's below me should be responsible which she agreed to. She is going to mention that in the strongly worded letter that they are going to be getting and asked me to call her when I had a quote as to how much it was going to cost to have it replaced.

Personally, I hope they get evicted and that they are also hit with a bill from the fire department as they were/are so clearly in the wrong for what they did. It could have been so much worse. I shudder to think about how bad it could have been!

Sorry that this is such a long post ...... and thanks for "letting" me vent! I've been a bit on edge most of the day and it has helped somewhat to have written it down!

OMG! You were so lucky that you hadn't been out there at that particular moment! If you had leaned over to see what was happening below you when the fireball came you could have caught your clothes on fire and died! They could have caught the whole building on fire and dozens of people died! What were they thinking? That was insanely dangerous!

I would still be shaking with nerves. I'm usually able to keep calm in a crisis, but I break down afterward.

Oh my! I am so glad that you didn't get hurt...I could see why you would be on edge, I would too!

Wow Muggins, that is scary. I'm glad to hear everything turned out okay, I hope they do get evicted.

What a couple of morons! Who would cook on the balcony of a highrise? Duh! It might have been a good thing that you moved the paper -- it might have caught when the netting did, but it would have been terrible if you had been moving it when the netting went up! Glad you're ok!

That's enough scare to last you the rest of this year and next year, too. I would have flipped out!

So sorry this happened!! good luck getting your netting fixed!

So glad that you are okay! My goodness!! I hope they replace the netting. And that they get evicted. They put everyone in the building at risk.

That is scary! I'd be a bit freaked until I knew they didn't live there anymore. Keep your eyes open, sounds like they have little sense.