What a frightening thing to have happen and thank goodness you woke up and could smell the problem immediately.

How well do you know your other tenants? If possible, get to know them a bit better and in case of an emergency hopefully they could help YOU with the cats.

I can understand that in an emergency situation it isn't always easy to be cool headed. I guess I would pile the cats in the carriers as rapidly as possible and ask for help immediately.

For some reason having a some wet towels to put around the carriers - or at best one on top.....to keep the smoke away comes to my mind.

I sure am sorry you had to deal with this, but as you said it is a wake up call - and makes you think about what to do in an emergency - and also about insurance.

The person below you is pretty lucky you alerted him/her in time!