(no subject)
At around 3:45am today, I woke up to the sight of my heater spewing flames. My first thought was to call 911 before the fire spread beyond the heating unit. But I ran to the thermostat instead and turned the temperature down below the current temperature in the apartment. The flames went out.
I called the emergency number for my landlord at 4am and a tired, very annoyed person answered. I explained that the apartment could have could been set aflame, but they didn't seem too worried. The person told me to turn off the gas, open a window in the apartment (mind you, it's about 48 degrees outside) and someone would show up at my apartment in the morning.
I didn't really sleep until the maintenance guy, who doesn't really speak English, showed up at 9:45am for fear that somehow fire would ignite and I'd be burned alive (as irrational as that sounds now).
The maintenance guy opened up the heating unit and once he did, it was clear that the pilot light set the obscene amount of dust in it on fire, causing my 3am flame-thrower. He went to his truck, grabbed a sponge and brushed away about 1/10th of the dust in the heater.
When the maintenance guy tried turning the heater on again, nothing happened. I explained this is the problem I've had since I moved in and that I've contacted the manager about this many times. I'm not sure if he understood me or not, but regardless, it wasn't his fault that he wasn't ordered out to fix my heater and he just responded with a, "Oh, okay. I fix."
He futzed with the unit and thermostat some more and managed to get the heater working. However, through his broken English, I surmised there was something still wrong with the heater because he said he wanted to come back Monday and fix it again.
In the meantime, I have heat for the first time since I moved in. I'm looking forward to feeling the tip of my nose in my apartment.
Fortuitously, when he walked in to the unit and tried turning on the hallway light that also never worked properly (and was reported, but never acted on), he noticed and said he would fix that as well.
All in all, I guess things worked out. It's just a shame that it took the apartment getting so close to burning down in order for the landlord to act.