I missed church yesterday and I’d like to share an important lesson with you.
You know fire alarm “sprinklers”?
I accidentally hit mine with a hanger because I accidentally was stupid enough not to know better than to hang my clothes on these dudes.
Sprinkler my a$$.
“High-pressure, blow you down, gallon-per-second deluge makers” is more like it.
Sunday Floody Sunday.
This is not even 1/4 of the damage.
You can skip to the bottom for the take-a-way or sit through the story –but it’s long and it cramps my style.
No one can turn off the fire alarm sprinkler except the fire department. So whilst they are alerted and en-route you are left to ponder the utter devastation and obnoxious amounts of water flooding your apartment at an alarming rate.
My apartment = swampland.
Shin deep in some places. Awesome.
I suppose I could have learned this on any given Sunday, but this happened to be Easter Sunday.
How many people’s Easter can one woman possibly disturb?
Lets count. My entire building – 12 apartments in all – was shut down for a bit. No power. Then there was my two friends who ran with me into the floodgates to retrieve salvageables and move furniture …we got sopping wet.
Other neighbors played with Zoe and set up a camp for her. Zoe was very emotional.
Two Fire trucks came. I counted 10 firemen in all.
Two maintenance staff from my apartment complex. They were on call. One came from a family gathering in Miami.
That’s Alvaro coming out of my neighbor’s apartment which also flooded – because that’s how awesome I am. Yes, ladies….I know. He’s taken, though.
My furniture slowly started moving outside. I felt so exposed.
Two fire alarm men (my term) who were SO nice.
Two vans of water extractors (4 people in all) came to suck out water and put fans in.
That’s 23 people and one dog – I won’t count the onlookers from other buildings or my neighbors and their dogs. The worse thing was just watching all these people running around and sweating to clean up my mess. That’s why I stopped taking pictures pretty quick.
It could have been worse.
The sprinkler could have gone off in my closet or bedroom. There could have been a real fire. There could have been a real flood.
I actually told my neighbor if it had to happen to someone I am glad it was me.
So, my world is a little un-tame right now. There was minimal damage and at least they turned my electric on. Plus I have really great books to read and blogs to stalk while I lay in bed and avoid walking on the carpet which I hope gets replaced.
*Take-A-Way*
Those sprinkler heads can go off when you hit them.I thought they were just faucets powered by a heat or smoke detector. So basically stay away!
That is all.
