On Friday, May 15th, I was moving into a new apartment complex with the help of my brother, my mom, and my friend Ollie. We arrived to the complex at 9PM with the UHAUL and began unloading boxes at 10PM. The room was on the 6th floor, so we would take the elevator down, grab boxes from the UHAUL, and then take them back up to my room. We did these trips for about 2 hours, and each trip took roughly 3-4 minutes. At a little past midnight, we went down to do the final trip and left my 1 year old Dachshund, Walter, in my room while we went. We went down, grabbed boxes, and came back up. As we were walking down the hallway back to my room, the fire alarms started going off. We were confused what was going on, so we decided to go back to the room to drop off the last boxes and grab Walter to evacuate the building. When we arrived at my front door, there was smoke coming through the door from my room. We dropped the boxes, opened the door, and were instantly hit by a huge wave of smoke coming from the room. The room was pitch black, covered in smoke, and water sprinklers were flooding the floors. My immediate thought was Walter was trapped inside. My friend Ollie and I decided to run into the room to try to find him. The water on the floor went up to our ankles. Even with a flashlight, I could not even see a foot in front of me, so I guided myself through the room with my hands until I reached the back of the room. However, Walter was nowhere to be found. I ended up running inside 2 more times to try to find him but I couldn’t find him on all 3 attempts. At that point, I had inhaled too much smoke to continue staying in the room/hallway, so we were forced to evacuate. The fire department arrived shortly after, and after waiting outside on the street for 5 minutes, a firefighter came out with Walter in his hand. He was very shaken up, but he was somehow okay. My brother, Ollie, and I had to get in an ambulance to get checked due to the amount of smoke inhaled, but luckily, we were all okay. A few hours later, we were allowed back up into the unit to see the damage. Everything inside the apartment was destroyed beyond repair, including PC’s, TV’s, furniture, computer equipment, and more. As devastating as it is to lose everything I had, I am forever grateful that everyone, including Walter, is safe and okay.