water heater

one morning, a couple of days ago, while i was somewhere in las piñas, my brother texts me: "mom just called. the bathroom burned down. please go home". texts like that don't really start your day right. i suddenly got even more worried when i realized that the only people in the house were my parents and the two house helps. all of us kids were out and the driver was also out doing an errand.

knowing the mental and physical condition of my parents, i was really kind of worried about how they were feeling when i was on my way back home. with my mom a little above 50 and my dad pushing 60, their heart conditions aren't exactly at tip-top shape. true enough, when i got home i found them both lying on their beds, resting from the recent 'drama' in casa cabigas.

i asked our katulong what happened and she said that when she entered one of the bathrooms upstairs, she smelled something burning. she looked around and saw the water heater in the shower area in flames! she ran downstairs to wake my mom up in the best way you could ever wake up: "ate, may sunog po sa taas...". in all calmness. oh diba, parang walang sunog sa taas. what's funny, nagising agad mom ko tapos she got up right away. pero since na-feel niya na nabigla siya kaagad with all that head rush, humiga siya ulit. haha! (good going mom). buti na lang my dad was awake na 'coz he jogs every morning.

surprisingly, even with all his ulyanin-ness and general lack of sharpness these days, he immediately checked it out, got a towel, wet it, and covered it on top of the water heater until the fire eventually died. good thing he didn't get electrocuted 'coz he was already touching the insides of the 'electric' water heater with a 'wet' towel. (good going dad). oh well. at that time the entire bathroom got filled up with smoke already and the village firetruck arrived. whew.



this is that stupid water heater. the ceiling above is completely black actually 'coz of all that smoke. luckily enough, the smoke didn't spread so much because our bathroom has really big windows. another good thing was that the ceiling wasn't made of wood so nothing really burned down, just the water heater. we still don't know what caused the fire exactly but it was basically the water heater's fault. hehe.