Fighting Fire With....

...Construction workers. Yup, very un-stereotypical. It's like answering the question "how many people does it take to change a lightbulb?" (I don't quite see the similarities of the incident and the cliche, but I have this feeling that they are very much similar.) How? Why? Shouldn't it be the job of the "Brave Men of Ladder 49?"

I woke up at 4 a.m. and got hold of my towel for a morning shower. I wasn't quite sure why I woke up that early without bothering to look at the time piece. All I can recall was my brother waking me up, telling me to do so. As I neared the bathroom, I realized that I was shook off my bed for a different reason. There was an emergency.

Throwing my towel on th bedroom floor, I rushed upstairs to see what the problem was. And then, before anyone could answer, I heard firecrackers.... or were they gunshots? So again, I asked what the problem was. Apparently, during the night, an overhead powerline just in front of the house beside us broke, exposing a live wire in the process--a live wire that immediately caught fire.

My father went outside to look into it, as did my brothers and me, and several of our neighbors. It was New Year's Eve in a cold October dawn! The sparks created by two strands of wire touching each other provided a luminosity of a floodlight and a bang comparable to firecrackers (think Judas' belt). I rushed inside to call for emergency, while my brother switched off the main power source in the house. Leaving them on would put our house in more risk if and when the fire reaches the main cable.

I called the fire department and they informed me that it was not in their jurisdiction to put off flames caused by electrical wirings! So, does this mean that there are several kinds of firefighters? Hmmmm..... There's one for big flames, one for those caused by candles, one for putting out the flame of a match stick... etc, but none for a flaming live wire. So they told me to call up the local electricity provider.

For 30 minutes or so, I called them thrice just to follow up on when they could--ASAP--send someone over to fix the problem. If the fire reaches the main cable, which, based on my estimate, would take about 20 minutes, the whole street would be engulfed in flames. My father, realizing that desperate times call for desperate moves, commissioned my brother to get sand, and together, threw sand at the live wire. Great idea, although the flaming wire was way beyond their reach, nor the reach of the sand thrown. They were successful, though, in coming up with a sand rain.

It was a good thing that several construction workers were working on a house two houses away from us. My father asked for their help and they immediately got hold of three long slabs of wood. They managed to separate the two wires whose contact with each other were causing sparks and fire. The other one put off the flame by pressing against one of the slabs with his slab. It was also fortunate that there was an electrician on hand to cover the loose ends with electrical tape.

We were all relieved by this turn of events that each of us slowly went back inside our house. At this point, when everything was already alright, the electricity company's lineman came.

Now that's what I call fast reaction to an emergency situation. What has this country gone to? I really don't understand how one country, capable of coming up with the brightest of ideas, be so lagging in technology. A central company could have immediately directed the call to all relevant departments and dispatched someone close to the scene immediately.

So how do you fight fire the next time you encounter one? Don't call emergency hotline numbers as it will only prove futile. Rely on yourself and probably a handful of neighbors to think instinctively on what to do. Rely on construction workers.

How many construction workers does it take to put off a fire? Three. Just make sure to have my dad these to instruct them what to do.