By now, you’ve had the experience where you hear a sound, a loud sound, and you know you should be able to identify it, but you can’t? Last evening, had just finished a telephone call with ‘another ship’ – a friend who is traveling a lot this summer – and away as I have been for many weeks – and we have been ‘passing’ in the nigh- and walk to my kitchen/sitting area. I hear a sound as I approach. Now we are talking about a 10 foot stretch here, and as I move forward toward this sound, I look and see water streaming, literally streaming from the ceiling onto the rug on the floor. I look. I look again, and realize that I can’t quite take it in. I’m that way when something is completely off the chart of my known experiences. The first thing I do is remove the small persian silk rug that is absorbing all this liquid. This of course wets my head, hair and back. I toss it into the bath tub. I open the oven where I store pots and pans and pull out a cooking pot and place it on the floor where the rug was. Now it is dawning, there are multiple leaks coming from the apartment above. I grab the pots and pans and spread them around on the hardwood floor, grab my phone and run up the stairs. I bang on the door of the apartment above me. No answer. I continue to bang on the door. Still no answer. I run back down the stairs, through the hallway, past my door, down a second set of stairs to the main floor entrance where there is a ‘weekend’ number to call, posted on the wall. I call. Get one of those persons where you try to explain this is an emergency of the first order, and all they want are the facts. They also speak as slowly as possible because you are somewhat excited and they are going to calm you down by being slow and methodical. All you want from them is to take the information as quickly as possible and relay it to wherever it has to go to stop the emergency. He could have been lounging at pool’s edge for all the haste and effort he put into the taking of the information. His final words are ‘I’ll pass it along”. I run back up stairs into my apartment. I enter the bathroom, reach on top of my washer dryer unit, bring down the plastic container with towels and another with first aid stuff. Dump the contents of both on the rug and start to spread the towels around along with the pans. The water just keeps coming. The pans are filling quickly, especially those on the gas stove top. Another leak develops in the back of the sitting room, rush to it with towel and pan as it starts to drip on a chair. And then a heavy leak starts to spatter in the sink. Thank God it is at least in the kitchen sink. Thinking I am somewhat contained, I rush back up the stairs to the apartment above me. I spare no one the noise. I bang on the door as I am simultaneously calling out “HELLO, HELLO’. I jiggle the door. Hard. Locked and no answer. I run back down the stairs, call the ‘weekend emergency number’ for a second time, inquire of mr. droll what he has done, and he won’t reply without taking all the same information all over again. I ask “Are you going to get help or do I call the fire department’. to which he replies “I wouldn’t know about that’. I figured he and I needed to part ways. Unceremoniously I end the call and dial 911. It takes 5 or 6 rings – but who’s counting – and I get a sane female voice. “What is the emergency? “Water is gushing through my ceiling onto my floor from the apartment above. Do you send the fire department?” “Yes” she says, “Hold on and I’ll connect you”. In the seconds that it takes to connect me, I hear her say, “Yes they are on the line.” and know she isn’t speaking to me. The fire department dispatch asks me my address, and mater-of-fact states they will come. I set the phone down, out of the way of the rain fall, which is now gathering steam and making new paths down the apartment walls, the walls of the hallway and onto the hall floor. I have propped open my door so that I can keep an eye on developing water ways. Within five minutes, I see the flashing lights outside my window, as I am wringing out towels and emptying containers in the sink. I hear the buzz-in request. I push the button and before I know it, a stream of firemen are coming up the stairs. As the first one approaches my door, all I can say is “I’m too old for this”. as he looks at a bedraggled and haggard woman shoe deep in spattering water. He exits and sloshes his way down the hall. He is followed by a troop of men, and about the fifth one in line is carrying neptune’s staff. I watch as the procession goes up the stairs. They now bang on the door. I call up to them, I have done that, twice already, no one is home. With the commotion of male voices, the residents that are home begin to show up in the upper hall. I am #3. #1,2,&4 aren’t home. #5 is the one above me with the torrent, so #6 & #8 begin to gather. Both couples. The firemen are now ‘crowbarring’ the apartment above me. What a din. It takes them a number of rams and spears but the door opens. I expected that they would at least find a passed out body, if not a dead one, but no one was home. The toilet had been left running and was pouring it’s contents over the floor. There was water everywhere. Luckily the occupant is not a tidy person, so all the clothes and clutter on the floor helped absorb some of the water. The firemen shut down the toilet. Lock the door and troop again down the stairs to my door. “Well, that stops the water. That is all we can do. We’ve locked the door. Sorry we can’t help.” They proceed down the stairs and out the front door to their engine. The four occupants of 6 & 8 spring into action. One of them tries to call #5, but his mailbox is full. They happen to have his number because he moved into where they once lived. He is a pilot so no one knows if he is in town. Texting works. Between the other occupants many phone calls are made. They try to track down, the super, another better number for management, the plumber, and anyone else they have on file that works for the company that owns the building in which we all live. As they are doing this, the streams of water become thinner, the noise lessens and I can see that the deluge part of the event is over. There is nothing more I can do but mop and wring out towels. People come and go, and at one of the comings is an ashen face 40’s year old man who stops in his haste to give his name, says he is sorry and sprints up the stairs to his apartment #5. I hear banging, more banging, and then suddenly one of the four is at my door, asking if he can climb through the window. The door will not open with the key. He is followed out the window by #5 who has returned and up the stairs of the fire escape. A few second later I hear much banging upstairs, and then a knock on my window, which I have shut. One of the 4 is back at the window to get in, as they can not get the door to apartment #5 open from the inside either. By now it is 90 minutes after I first discovered my own personal Niagara and the water has stopped. My damage is the entire ceiling, two walls, one small kitchen rug, a silk persian rug and a stack of towels. I finish setting the fans, mopping and wringing and decide to call it night. Because his bedroom had a threshold – which mine does not- my bedroom is safe and dry. I have a Dr’s appointment early morning, because I have limited movement in my hip. Didn’t happen to notice it tonight.
