So last night I get woken up at 2:55 AM to the sound of:
“EVERYBODY, WAKE UP. FIRE!! WAKE UP!!”
What.
I literally jumped out/off of my bed, hurled down the
stairs and rounded the corner to find my roomates pouring any water they could
find on top of our refrigerator, which was aflame. A truly foul smell filled
the house and dark smoke was flowing steadily out of the kitchen. I had been
dreaming literally seconds before seeing this, but it felt just as surreal as
any dream I may have been having.
And then seconds later, the fire was out. At its highest,
the fire was about a foot-and-a-half above the top of our chest-high fridge,
and took 3 frantic people to put out. It was caused by an electric-kettle
water-heater-upper thing, which had somehow stayed on for who knows how long,
causing the heating element to melt the plastic kettle, then set it ablaze. The
worsening destruction was slowed when the cord of the kettle was melted,
causing the cable to short circuit and throw the breaker. While this did help
prevent the element from continuing to melt/ignite everything in its path, a
good deal of melting/igniting had been caused already. To make things worse,
when the power is out in our house, so is the water; this meant that we were
only able to get to the water that was already in the pipes and toilets, and
any drinking water we had in our water jug. Luckily, that was enough to put out the flames, without even having to go in to toilet territory.
Lucky seems to be the theme of this fire. All we really
lost was our hot plate and the strong-willed kettle itself; the fridge still
works despite obvious aesthetic setbacks, and the mess/stench have been mostly
dealt with. However, things could’ve gone WAY worse had a lot of things not
worked out in our favor. The list is long, and ill spare you the minute
details, but had things not gone just as they did, I don’t know if I’d be
posting this right now.
Not like, dead.. but like, computer gone, or.. you know,
way bigger things to worry about aside from blogging, that sort of thing. Point
is, it was a wild and sobering experience, and realizing that your entire
lifestyle could’ve literally gone up in flames in front of your eyes is a
pretty intense thing.
It’s the kind of experience that makes you reconsider the
way you look at things (“things”, in this case, being actual physical things).
I’ve surrounded myself with them, as most of us have to some degree or another,
and had they been taken away from me I imagine I would’ve felt truly wounded.
The prospect and legitimate possibility of that happening makes you reconsider
ownership. Or at least, it makes ME reconsider ownership, which I already claim
to have a fairly loose concept of. What’s mine? What does it matter if I call
it “mine.” Who cares what’s “mine”, and what does “mine” even mean?
Well I didn’t mean to get all deep about a
faulty-appliance fire, it just sort of happened. But anyway, good story right?
Can’t make that stuff up. Not that it can’t be done, I'm just bad at making
stuff up. It's a condition, I live with it.
So just remember folks, please unplug your cheap second-hand shit any questionable appliances, especially if they produce heat, and especially if you’re in Thailand (where standard voltage
is an electrifying (see what I did there?) 220 Voltz.)
Here’s a video to help us keep it all in perspective:
There you go, it was Ryan.
P.S. Sorry about the lack of pictures, my camera is on the fritz. Ima get on that TOMORROW. Ima get on that fo sho.
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