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What is the meaning of the quote “no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels” from the short story "There Will Come Soft...

Despite the fact that the automated house in Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" has started the day by making announcements and cooking breakfast, there is no sign of humans. In the first paragraph the narrator indicates that "The morning house lay empty" and later that "no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels." Instead of describing human characters, the narrator makes the house itself the main character. It is not revealed until well into the story that there has been an atomic blast and that the house is the only one still standing "in a city of rubble and ashes." The humans who inhabited the house, two parents and two children, have been incinerated in the attack, but their silhouettes remain on the charred outside wall on one side of the house, reminiscent of photographs taken in the days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

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