I could feel
the boredom in the meeting area. The piles of ice lying on the ground in the
corners had not yet melted. No one had tried to build a snowman or even have a
little bit of fun with the snow. The students around me turned their attention
to the front. We had been hearing similar speeches every day. On this occasion,
they wanted us to do everything seriously and gain valuable experience. We were
treated like robots to be programmed with modern Panasonic profit measures. We
had already helped out for two weeks in summer at various stores where our
seniors worked in. This time it would be a month.
In the early
hours of the next day, there were buses waiting outside the school for the
seniors to get to the stores. We were going to walk to our store with
supervising teachers to show our willingness to work. A sense of importance
could be felt by all of us. All the new knowledge that we had gained was being
revised in our heads. This was to make sure that we put into action all of the
skills that we had acquired.
A few teenagers
attempted to block the footpath. They were all dressed in casual clothes and
seemed to be up to something. Their hands were in their pockets. Several were
smoking and others showed aggressive behaviour. We looked towards our teacher
who pretended not to notice them.
‘Shall we rest
at this park?’ the teacher said. We all immediately agreed. There were stairs
leading up to the park and we had a good view of what was going on from above.
‘We may be
staying here for some time,’ the teacher said. ‘I suspect trouble going on
below.’
‘What is your
plan?’ asked the student next to me.
‘Speaking to
these people won’t be of much use,’ the teacher said. ‘We will call the police
as soon as they do something. One of us will have to go to the shop we were
planning to do work experience in and inform them of our situation.’
We were all
capable people. The teenagers outnumbered us greatly but posed no fear to us.
We saw the teenagers leave the area after a while. He sent five of us to go
after them and ordered me to stay. Shortly afterwards, smoke began to curl and
billow out of the window of the tall shop building in front of us.
‘Call the fire
brigade,’ the teacher said. ‘We have to focus on the teenagers.’ There had been
around fifteen of them.
I jumped over
and down the whole set of stone stairs after throwing down my mobile phone and
raced across the road to the other side, where shouts and other noises were
beginning to become louder. Most people had already escaped from the building. However,
I felt the necessity to double check. All the floors were filled with smoke and
I realised that there was nothing that I could do. After getting out of the
building feeling somewhat silly and lucky to be alive, a lady began to shout at
me. I looked around for help from my teacher, but he wasn’t around. The lady
was asking me whether I had seen any children. I realised that there had been victims. I could not think properly
and almost stumbled back into the burning building. It was at that moment when
the first fire trucks arrived at the scene.
‘Get away from
this building! Everyone, it is going to collapse on you!’ The loud voice of
warning echoed.
We could all
hear a loud splitting noise coming from the front of the building. Looking up
from directly below the front of the building, time seemed to rotate slower on
the clock as the wall collapsed. It was already tilted at around 70°when I regained that confidence in myself.
There were several people who had tripped and fallen. I pulled them back up
onto their feet to allow them to escape and then carried two children with two
hands before making my way across the road. Many people were facing their smartphones
at me. I could think of nothing. The wall fell with a deafening crash onto
several unlucky fire fighters and just narrowly missed us.
People came up
to me and thanked me for the assistance in escaping. Others were weeping.
Bodies on stretchers were carried out from the entrance and guilt overwrote the
virtuousness in my heart. I had never experienced arson first hand before.
Amidst all the order
and chaos, one officer came and said that all the students had been found
safely pursuing their respective teenagers. Only the teachers could not be
found.
‘Probably
because they don’t wear the blue shirts or staff jumpers with the Panasonic
logo on them,’ I said. ‘What do I have to do now?’
‘You won’t have
to go to hospital, and we do not require further information from you,’ the
officer said. ‘Therefore we have arranged for you to be transported back to
your school.’
I wondered
whether the teacher had deliberately run away in order to avoid putting his own
life at risk. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about me. The media had missed
the collapsing of the wall. All anyone would ever know about the event was a
deliberately set up fire and the actions of the fire fighters.
Heroes don’t
receive the public’s attention. We are unknown to most but known to many.