up in smoke, almost

friedreich rommel delos santos on January 7th, 2008

harrowing sunday. my apartment almost got burned. yep, you read it right, burn, toast, ashes, all because of the very reason why i moved to manila, my cousin.

when i decided that it’s high time for me to move to manila and get my own place, my mom insisted that i move to sampaloc. i have tons of relatives here and that can/will help me in times i need some sorting out. which i read as a watchful eye on me when she’s not around. anyhoo, so i moved to sampaloc manila against my better judgment; i was set to moving to ortigas area, walking distance to my office. i am not big with my cousin, this one in particular; come to think of it, i am not close to any cousin of mine. i hardly say hi to him or his wife, keeping my distance to them though i am fond of his father tito ric. i used to see him a lot when i was a kid hanging with my mom like almost everyday. both my cousin and his wife smokes, his teenage sister also smokes. you can see their house filled with smoke and the ziggy butts in front of their house in the morning would not disagree. well it’s all fine with me but they do it in front of their 4 children, the youngest being a 2 month old baby.

afternoon around 2.00, my cousin was having his nails manicured when they smelled something burning. it was the children’s room in flames. tonio, the 2 year old, played with the lighter and set one of the pillows on fire. good thing that they were able to figure it out/smelled it early. the whole street was alarmed and helped each other put out the fire. cousin rushed out of his home and shouted fire! as he rushed to the baranggay hall. mom who was at the living room watching star movies got alarmed and panic. she called out for my yaya and started to barked out orders on which items should be saved. yaya of course panicked more and started to run in circles figuring out which will she pick out to save, headed outside to my tita’s building and waited, still out of her senses. mom, though still composed, was having an attack in the middle of chaos. my other yaya, yaya luring, poured cold water all over mom to prevent her blood pressure from shooting up. i have to commend the baranggay captain having 5-10 fire extinguishers handy in his office. miko ran to my tita’s building and got another 5 cans of fire extinguisher. the firemen came to rescue and dose what was remaining of the fire.

nobody got hurt, thank God, but the house is in terrible shape. from the outside, it’s all good but the damage inside is beyond repair. as for my apartment, it’s just after my cousin’s. although the fire was caught before it did some damage to my place, my guest room is all wet. when the firemen extinguished the fire, the pressurized water peered through the ceiling and leaked to the ceiling of my guest room. all the books beyond salvage, the bed is drenched with water and soot and some funky smell from the ceiling. my clothes were stained, shoes ruined from the water, the hard wood floor of the 2nd floor is now dilapidated and the first floor ceiling is leaking like hell. yaya was able to save my 3 laptops and my gucci bag (thank you yaya!) while mom saved all our paper trails. aside from that, all is and should be considered gone. my new 55 cm epi louis vuitton keepall is gone even before i got the chance to use it.