Home And Family USA

When my husband and I moved from the mid-west to the east coast a few years ago, we discovered quickly that we had a problem. We had accumulated so much stuff during our five years in Nebraska that we couldn’t possibly fit it all in a U-haul to drag it halfway across the country, especially since there was the added complexity of also getting our two cars back east as well. We decided that one of us would drive a car and the other would drive the U-haul with the other car hitched to a tow hookup on the back. And to keep in touch with each other on the trip we bought a set of Motorola walkie talkies to use on the road between our vehicles.

At first the walkie talkies were a safety measure. If something happened to one of us and we needed to pull over, our walkie talkies would be a way to alert the other person to what was going on. The reality of how we used our Motorola walkie talkies on the trip was much less pragmatic than simple safety. We used them to entertain ourselves, amuse each other and have conversations while driving through ridiculously huge states with no good radio stations. Hello, Iowa, I’m talking to you!.

After a few hours, I began to see the Motorola walkie talkies as a way to give my husband status updates. I told him how the U-Haul looked from behind, I told him about the temperature in the interior of my car, I alerted him to a good song playing on the radio station I was listening to. We also each had a cat in our vehicles with us, so sometimes we would hold the walkie talkie up to the cat carrier to let it talk too. I guess what I’m trying to say is that driving across the United States, with only the cat in the carrier beside you as a companion, is a boring trip. Which is why we were so grateful for our Motorola walkie talkies.

We never used our walkie talkies again after completing the move. And I’d forgotten about them until recently when I found them in the basement while preparing for a yard sale. We thought about keeping them because they could come in handy for talking to each other in our four story house when we’re both on different floors. But we have an intercom system, so the Motorola walkie talkies really aren’t necessary. We decided to sell them at our yard sale for five dollars. And every person who looked at them had to listen to me rave about how great Motorola walkie talkies are for long trips, whether that’s what they wanted them for or not.

If you work or live in a large commercial warehouse, there is nothing more crucial to your safety than proper fire precautions. Believe me - I found out the hard way. As an artist and crafts person, I was pleased as pie that I could find a space to do my work for very cheap in a warehouse in downtown Oakland. But, unfortunately, the lack of expense was for a reason, and one that I should have seen before I moved in and it was too late.

Not only was it in a dangerous area, but it was dangerous itself. The building was not up to fire code, and there were inadequate fire sprinklers and containment walls. But that is not the worst part of it. The worst part is that the automatic fire sprinklers were messed up. They did not work or could not be triggered properly. Some of the automatic fire sprinklers were not even hooked up to the water source. And of all of the automatic fire sprinklers in the building, at least one half of them were blocked by the false ceiling panels above the wall dividers.

One night, tragedy finally struck and many of us were very lucky not to be killed for ignoring proper safety. There was a fire effects show, with flame swallowers and great pyrotechnic displays. The people putting it on were all locals who lived or worked in the warehouse, so there was just a fabulous turn out to watch them all doing their thing. But something went wrong. I do not know what happened. Maybe something got kicked over, or one of the flames went a little bit too high. Before you knew it, the building was burning. The automatic fire sprinklers did almost nothing. A few dripped down or sprinkled a little bit of water, but the fire hardly seemed to notice. There was only one exit to the room and the fire was building faster than the automatic fire sprinklers could fight it. It looked like some of us might find ourselves trapped or trampled in the building.

Fortunately, one of the old pipes feeding the automatic fire sprinklers burst, sending out a huge flood of water. This slowed down the fire enough to allow us to get out. By the time the firemen got in, it was easy to contain. But the lack of working automatic fire sprinklers almost cost us our lives.