The fire that destroyed her dad’s third-floor apartment is the scariest thing that’s ever happened to 8-year-old Dakota Johnson. It was five-thirty in the morning. Someone on the first floor of the building had fallen asleep smoking. Dakota and her dad, Kenneth Johnson, woke up to the sound of the fire alarm. First it seemed like it might be just a small blaze, but when Johnson opened the door to the apartment, smoke and soot rushed in. Dakota was too scared to crawl out into the hallway, so the two ended up fleeing through a window.
Physically, they were mostly all right, but Dakota’s dad had inhaled some smoke. He’d also lost all of his belongings in the flames. The emotional toll of the experience was another story. Long after the fire was extinguished, Dakota’s fear remained.
She’d always been sensitive, but in the days and weeks afterwards, she began to cry easily. She was afraid to go sleep. She was still a good student — her favorite subject is math, and she carries a backpack emblazoned “#GirlGenius” — but she started leaving class with stomach aches, and making frequent trips to the school counselor.
[For more on this story by Jen Kinney, go to https://whyy.org/articles/as-a...for-philly-students/]
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