11-X-2023.: The fire
Had a powerout at 9:39. No big deal, though these days it would happen at full or half hour exactly, not like this. That was a bit strange, but wouldn't be the first time that the thing they kinda fixed yesterday breaks today, and that wouldn't be on round time. I remembered that I have a few more minutes of power in the youpeeess, and at 2023-10-11 09:40:22.884134 I blindly pressed alt+s (the hotkey for 'snimi' in Byo) and thus wrote down whatever I was doing on the 15-V-2007. article.
Few minutes later Violet asked „what's that smell“ (because there's no 'kakav' in english, and I'm suppressing my urge to reply with 'it's a smell' for years now). She did sense something, and then so did I. First of something burning - maybe Radoslav grills something again, but this is not it... let's see if it's something around the house, a bit of plastic burn came too... there's some smoke at the staircase. That's where turbo switched on in my head, I rushed upstairs, and was firs surprised to see it's dark in the front room. All glasses black. I opened to see what's up (yup, facepalm, but turbo acts first analyzes later) and was engulfed in a cloud of dark smoke. I don't remember whether I closed that door, as I ran for the bedroom immediately, but the smoke followed me. I just had to check whether it burns there too. Nothing burning, but already full of smoke. I pulled the roof window ajar, then the gable window, still not enough, back to the roof one, open it fully, stick my head out lowest I could, my nose down to the roof, breathe a lot, run back. But no, not enough air, back to the window, breathe two lots, deeper and longer. Had enough and came down - had enough air for the five steps to the staircase, and five steps down to get below the smoke level. She said she tried to call the firemen, but 93 isn't the number anymore, it's 193 now, but then she lost the connection and the phone went dumb. She passed me my mobile as we went out, now by the gate already, and there I tried to unlock my phone, got it in third try and called 193. I was already quite composed, I spilled exactly the data they would need.
Around 9:50 we're standing outside with the neighbor and waiting for the firemen. I already parked Joda on Radoslav's lawn, and the neighbors helped me push the van back to be out of the way when they come.
At 9:55 we're all outside, lined up by Faik's fence, the firemen are already upstairs with their hose. The glass breaks, some shards from the left roof window lands by the main door. When the terrace door shattered, some shards reached over the lawn and onto the asphalt. Linda felt some water drops, which is why they moved to Faik's. The shards by the main door she cleans up immediately, so the kids don't step on it.
This is the second shot, at 9:56:07. We're lucky that the fire station is near by, at the busodrome, kilometer and a half from here, and they came within five minutes and extended the hose upstairs and stopped the fire within, probably, ten minutes. What took some time was to check that it isn't smoldering somewhere and waiting for a chance to reignite.
This is when I came down from my turbo trip, maybe, who knows how long it took. There were no outside signs on me, Nina says I was acting quite normally, sensibly etc. Yup, that's on the main channel, but my brain was working on some five-six more in parallel, and that wasn't just random stuff but elaboration of current problems, though the propositions that came out were sometimes quite abstract, a full trip.
This is when I got the time to talk with the firemen, the ones who stayed around the truck, to give a statement to the cops, and to walk the burnt room with the fire inspectors. There were two of them and then their chief also came, to investigate the cause of fire. It started behind the left speaker, which was powered by some older extension cord, last century vintage, which stayed mum there on a light duty, nothing else was plugged in, and its 80W were never even tried, I doubt it ever ran at more than 18W, I didn't push them. But the guy said it didn't matter, these are able to ignite even when there's nothing plugged in. Later it came to mind that we had a mouse there for the last five-six days, and it may have chewed the insulation, didn't have any other food there. Next to the cord, leant on the beams, was Lena's old memory foam mattress (ah the stupid names they give), and leant on it the big regular wired matress.
10:26 all of our household sit at Radoslav's, he made coffee for the ladies, provided juices and water for the kids.
10:49, just in case, we check that the gas and power are shut off. The gas is only outside, but there, Justin Case is an old friend. As for power, I completely forgot that the FID fuse tripped even before the whole thing started, and that power was off all the time. The fireman boss uncrews the main fuses.
Finally remembered to light one, and then one of the firemen asks if he could get one, he just gave his last to a colleague. Not that he looked familiar, but I saw that I knew me, so okay, the fuss is over, he can present himself now: Ćola. Whoa, hundred years... when was it we met last time, some paintshop it was, eh? He doesn't even remember he drove the truck when we moved. Is Bjanka still the beauty she always was? Like a picture, man, and you should have seen my late mother-in-law, she was a chick and a half to the last day“. „There, we lucky guys who catch them beauties, see this one of mine, we're nearing seventy and she's still like a dragon“. „Well there, I guess, is some of our merit too...“ „A, prob'ly the glue...“.
And there he saw the bolivian hot peppers growing by the entrance, so we picked a handful for him... well, no, come on here... and she picked two bottle-cum-flowerpots with nice plants for him, „get yourself hot in good health, and greetings to Bjanka“.
By 10:49 they were all gone and we stayed to see what to do now.
11:12 the kids are in our yard now. No power, no gas. The phone, amazingly, works. We go up for the first look around of the burn.
Everything is sooty. In the salon (now with real irony) it's sooty from floor to ceiling; the landing is clear up to 80cm height; bedroom lower 120. The AC in the bedroom is molten. Both windows glasses have cracked. Everything above 120cm is black, sooty, including the jars. The tobacco, in plastic bags, which was on the top of the shelf, is intact. The bags melted to an extent, but nothing touched the tobacco.
We decided to order a dumpster, just like we did 13 years ago, to have all this rubble taken away. Yesterday it would be easy, I'd look up their number, dial and be done. When it's like this... I have some web on my phone, but the browser is slow... got into Joda, faster that way, they're by the overpass, this side of the busodrome. I drove very carefully, concentrating on what I was doing, because my turbo still didn't stop, so had to care not to wander off for a few seconds and cuse trouble. Nothing untoward happened.
Maybe bicycle would be just as fast, there's no parking spot by their entrance, have to park behind the corner, at the cops, where it's paid. They now have two numbers - SMS your tags to one for 90 minutes, the other for the whole day. I start typing and, look at that, I already got the number. Except that old number is now for the long term, so I got a message from the parking service at 20:50 that my paid parking (110 dinars instead of 30) will expire in ten minutes, whereafter it becomes free until morning, I guess.
Found the relevant guy in the building, scheduled the truck, and the trucker couldn't get me on the phone as it was near empty and I turned it off until I can charge it. He just came.
12:49 we opened the gas valve and improvised a hotplate - the distiller's burner, thre bricks and the grille from the barbecue, warmed up the paprikaš and so we finally lunched. A bit of habanero left from yesterday, exactly comforting. Too bad we lost that wonderful plant...
She took that stalk of habanero upstairs few days ago, and now it's gone, it was less than a meter from the epicenter. While it was in the yard, two of its fruit were just getting the warm tones in some spots; the last time I looked at it, there were four in various stages of red, from yellowish green to brick orange. The fruit numbered around fifty, sized green pea and up to ping pong ball.
The list of the things gone includes the cimet, the jaybeeell's sound boxes, Steinberg sound card, the mouse which blinks like a carousel, the fruit dehidrator, the standing fan, the iron (but not it's ~ing board), the area heater - both of them indestructible Rowenta but still prone to melting, the modem and optic-to-electric converters with their power adapters, the typist chair from 2012, the box with spare hardware (secondhand scnaner, old 5,25 floppy, few power units, heap of cables, soldering stand with lens and crocodile clamps), the rotating monitor stand (which I brought from the there), the ketrec*, five or six barrels with noodles, barrel with rice and dried vegetables/fruit, the food processor, three brandy shots and a water glass, my reading glasses, box cutter (actually whole but bent so the blade won't slide out), spare monitor (at least one), acrylic paint (which she brought from the there), baby seats for the car, old suitcases (but most of the contents intact), one chair, about 60kg of sugar and flour... Also gone are all window glasses, including the doors (so whether I remembered to close it at first contact or not didn't matter much, as it may have passed more air to the fire, but at this speed of events, it may have mattered a minute this way or the other.
Miraculously survived: her paper (!) sticks for wickerwork, Simpić armchairs where we sat (charred, the top layer of sponge gone, but otherwise whole), all the content of the nightstand on which cimet stood: the mirko rags, the book (from Dragana, for forelast birthday), the yooessbea box for external disk, the thin cable I soldered three years ago, box of cigarettes from the period when our dealer was pausing. Then elsewhere, one plastic shihiny ball for the new year's spruce, the ironing board, almost all of my diaries (a bit soaked), the table with a wood grinder mounted underneath, which we brought in a few days ago and took vilhelmina to the bedroom. However, vilhelmina's yarn winder was mounted on this table, and melted completely. Its predecessor, the Standard's knitting machine from 1972, untouched in its cardboard box. The big tile cutter, all the vacuum cleaner's add-ons, spare tozna with all cigarettes in it (outer sheat molten, inside soaked except in the middle, the filters molten into a tiny nugget), and, miracle above all miracles, both brandy bottles. The wine bottle still held 0,3 of this year's apple, the square votka bottle was full of 21.1 tutifruti. The apple's stopper somehow tightened and we had trouble opening it, and there was a sooty line on the outside, at the height of liquid level. The square lost about 0,02l of liquid.
On the suitcases all wheels survived but none of the zippers. Though, one can't confirm they worked before this. Several volumes fo madicine encyclopaedia also survived but eventually ended in the dumpster all the same, „I don't know why did I ever buy that“. Likewise, a dozen books on mathematical subjects, in russian, soviet edition, partly from Pešta partly from Moskva, also flew, it's been many years since I stopped being a mathematician. Both led stick lights, which we used for sprouting the seeds in winter, intact.
After lunch we came up with the plan. We called Mića to run the power downstairs while cutting it off upstairs. He came really quick, and by 15:30 he was already doing the upstairs fuse board, the cover of which had molten but the insides look good. There he unhooked the incoming wires, then unhooked the same wires from the main fuse board. One fuse on the ground floor was wobbly, that's possibly the light in the big room, one above the couches, where it dripped from the ceiling. Its glass was filling with water, which I hosed out, but by the time Nina was taking it off it was full again.
A break in the yard, kids run around, make soap bubbles, play with the kittens (Licider aka Gingerbread aka Leppard vanished last week, so it's Rundek, Džimi, Vafao and Palačinka [waffle and pancake], Zelena comes sometimes, and the other day she brought the new kitten, Choco[late] aka Čoklica. I congratulate everybody for not succumbing to hollywood** propaganda and behaving normally - nobody shouted, nobody paniced-panicked-panicced [pick one], nobody awmygodded, just Linda and Sanda cried a little, but even that was more because of being abruptly taken out of bed. Wonderful, even when a cuntery like this happens, we pass with no drama. Such we are, and I pride myself in ourselves [there, made it sound as clumsy as in serbian].
17:03 Kees on skype, in the „trip to Serbia“ chat (where he, Jan, Nina and I are), says „Hey guys, saw the pictures of a fire on Facebook. Are you all fine?“. Nina replied at 19:56. I didn't see that conversation until 8th of november.
17:05 passed the bedroom with Nina's vacuum cleaner, to at least gather the sooty cobwebs from above the bed, as it falls at random. The linnen I couldn't vacuum, because it would suck half of it, and the other half rubbed in, all of it has to be washed. The alarm clock is barely readable, the soot takes to lens stops of light from the display. The cleaner croaked the next day, the soot seems to have found its way to where it shouldn't. It was second-hand, from the online classified ads, cost 2000 din, original Hoover, therefore non-standard gauge of its pipes and bits. Did its job nicely.
18:40 the mower extension cord now goes from the anteroom (nearest outlet is by the bathroom door) upstairs.
21:00 had a dozen minutes nap, while waiting for our linen to dry, but no good, my turbo confusion is coming back and the house is full of flies because we kept all the doors open to dispell the smells and to dry out the house, because who knows where all that water found a way in. Though our house is thirsty, both siporeks and concrete may drink a lot of water without a thought, it doesn't go so uniformly, and in some places it probably accumulated more than those places can soak in.
In the evening I at least tried to write down some impressions, but no can go, zmajček just won't, says the fan stopped. It didn't, but the cooler is congested. Not wasting time on that right now. Tomorrow will do. Wrote a voice note into the phone, and may play it some day. She came along just when I was about finished with recording, brought a bucket of water upstairs and washed those two bottles. The apple sort of lost a shade of taste, and while we didn't hope much from the tutifruti - it did loose a finger's height of liquid - it was still good. Smoked brandy, specialty of the house.
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* cage, in hungarian, but in serbian it's the baby's playpen
** adjective, ergo lowercase
Mentions: 15-V-2007., Bjanka, Byo (Byo), cimet, Ćola, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Faik Rizvani, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, Kees de Cock, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mića the electrician, mirko, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Radoslav Pajkov, Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), siporeks, tozna, vilhelmina, Violet, zmajček, in serbian