fire!

I'd have to say that this was one of the most bizarre days (and birthdays) of my entire life. We were in the middle of a special class meeting with Professor Scala, an instructor from the University of New Hampshire (we read his book and wrote a paper on it), when the fire alarm went off at our hotel. We ignored it for about 10-20 minutes because the hotel staff said nothing serious was wrong and they were taking care of it. Well, lets just say that something very serious was wrong and we quickly learned we needed to get out of the hotel. Apparently a fire started in the boiler room of the hotel, and it took quite a while for the fire department to get it put out.

There was really nothing we could do, so we left to go work at our campaign offices with Dr. McLauchlan and her husband keeping their ears open for any word about the situation and what exactly was going to happen with our living arrangements. By the time we dropped off the Manchester people and got to Concord (about an hour's drive), we got the call from Dr. McLauchlan that we were going to all have to come back and get our stuff out of the hotel.




Many of us were staying in rooms right below where the fire occurred and couldn't get access to our rooms to get our things out until after the fire department had conducted its investigation. We were told that everything was wet and the windows had been busted open, so we really had no idea what kind of shape our things were in. Maggie and I especially were worried because both of our laptops were in our room. Once we finally got in, it was a disaster in the hallways. There was black/grey muck everywhere and it was hard to breathe with the heavy smoke and chemical smell.




Our rooms were okay, miraculously. The floors were wet, so anything on the floor was either soaked or ruined. I had a bunch of clean and dirty clothes on the floor, so all of those I had to re-wash and I also had a stack of books on the floor beside my bed, though only the bottom one was ruined. Other than that, all my stuff was fine (including my laptop), but smelled fiercely of smoke. My blanket that my aunt got me last week in Chicago was ruined as well. I guess the firefighters thought it would be a good doorstop.

(sorry Aunt Cindy!)

Once we packed all our stuff up, Maggie, Laura D., Laura T. and I formed a line to pass our luggage out one of the windows; it was better than going back through those awful halls!

The four of us were all waiting around outside for the van to pull around when the Associated Press walked up and starting filming and interviewing us. I haven't seen it air yet, but I'm sure it will appear in some form as it sure sounded like a media-friendly sob story about a bunch of homeless students. Luckily, the hotel found us 10 rooms at another hotel about twenty minutes down the road, so we're safe and warm tonight. Our new hotel is actually in Massachusetts...at least I can add another state to my map!

Andrew

Once we got settled here at our new hotel around a quarter to five tonight, we all decided to eat dinner together and watch the debates since there was really no point in even trying to get to our campaigns so late in the day. It was a nice, relaxing evening after the craziness this week has been and I'm sure the next few days will be. We're staying in a Radisson and it's very nice. After we finished eating we were all hanging out in the hotel restaurant watching the debates and I ran out for a few minutes to get a new toothbrush out of the gift shop (mine smelled awful from all the smoke). I got back and sat down with everyone, and soon after they all surprised me by singing happy birthday and the restaurant staff brought out a piece of cake for me. It was really fun and so sweet of everyone. My day ended well despite all the chaos.

(Someone also paid my dinner check too, so whoever that was, THANK YOU!)

That's it for today. I have some catch up today for Thursday and yesterday (mostly yesterday) to do, which I'll try to put up here in the morning.

Night!

P.S. - Here are some local articles about the fire. I'll let you know if I find the AP video I was talking about...

WBZTV (Matt & Mr. McLauchlan are quoted here)
Nashua Telegraph
WMUR New Hampshire