Dealing With Disaster

[Redbeanz]

Cheese -
So awfully sorry, and am emailing you some specific proxy offers of help through friends. Wish we weren't so far away and could do something ourselves.
So glad you are all ok after that terrifying ordeal.

 

[JoeGillis]

Distressing news, ElQueso, but so very glad that you and the family are safe.

 

[semigoodlookin]

Sorry for your situation, but at least you and your family are here to tell the tale, and relatively unscathed. I wish you luck in the clean up and hope everything gets back to normal soon. My brother in law at a fire at his apartment in November, so I have some experience of the pain smoke damage can be to sort out. Best of luck.

 

[Alicia karr]

So sorry you had to go through that horrifying experience,and in awe of all of you for your heroic responses.
Even more, sharing this is a great reminder for us that we are all vulnerable. I noticed that my building has fire extinguishers in the stair well, but honestly they seem pretty big and I wonder if in the moment I'd even know how to use it properly...and my door is right by the kitchen. If that became blocked there'd only be the balcony and I'm six floors up,
Would you mind sharing HOW you tamed the flames? What did you use/do?
Please be aware that you've all been traumatized and may find it helpful to talk to someone about the experience (aside from the insurance people.) meanwhile if I can loan your family linens , clothes, or you want to use my kitchen to do some cooking or all come for dinner, please let me know.

 

[Pensador]

Dude that is a total bummer glad to hear no one was seriously injured. How bad are the damages in the apartment and your belongings?

 

[ElQueso]

La Coqueta, we put the fire out with wet sheets and towels. The laundry room is right next to the kitchen, with a utility sink in it, so we were able to wet the cloth and basically beat the flames to death. While things were burning, I managed to pull down a couple of sections of cabinet facing (the doors of two and a little bit of the actual face of the cabinet) to allow us to get inside the cabinets and smother the flames. We had to wet the towels and sheets a couple of times.

And yeah, I felt like a total idiot when, after the flames were out, I opened the kitchen door which opens right to the stair shaft and the landing at our floor and there, a half floor below, was a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall.

I admit to not writing about how we put the fire out because I was pretty damned embarrassed, but your post made me realize I should say something. The fact is, we were completely unprepared for a fire, not having thought about such an event except for buying the insurance. Had I left the kitchen immediately,as Nikad had suggested previously, I probably would have seen the extinguisher ans grabbed it and turned around to fight the fire anyway. I felt like a real idiot when i was going down to street level afterwards...

And I appreciate all the kind words from you and everyone else. The truth is, we have electricity back in the apartment in general as of yesterday, and gas back as of today. We can cook, we have a refrigerator (although on a cable from the hallway! no electricity in the kitchen except for an overhead light on a different circuit), it's just that it's kind of ugly with burned walls and ceilings and such, but manageable.

 

[Girino]

I probably would have seen the extinguisher ans grabbed it and turned around to fight the fire anyway. I felt like a real idiot when i was going down to street level afterwards...

Well, what kind of fire extinguisher is that? I am asking since you said there were electrical circuits involved. I don't know the local law about extinguishers for residential use, but given the limitations of this country i wouldn't be surprised f they had gone for the cheapest option, albeit not safest.

 

[ElQueso]

Dude that is a total bummer glad to hear no one was seriously injured. How bad are the damages in the apartment and your belongings?

Actually, the damages were surprisingly light, considering.

About two meters of upper cabinets completely toasted and some of the cabinets beside that area swelled up, probably from moisture in the press board they are made out of heating up before they, too, would have caught fire (but they'll have to be replaced). There are the blackened frames of part of the cabinets on the left side of the stove still needing to be pulled down. Paint around the area of the fire peeled/melted/exploded off the yeso underneath and in many places the yeso and some of the cement over the bricks had exploded from the heat. One of the cabinets on the floor next to the stove got heated up a bit and a couple of drawers won't open. The rest of the walls and ceiling in the kitchen are completely black with soot, though we've cleaned all the tiled and marble surfaces, with only a very little bit of spider cracks in some of the tile behind the stove.

There was a wooden frame with a wooden folding curtain that shut off one end of the kitchen from the laundry area, which is mostly blackened, burned wood. Right next to that, in the laundry area, were our refrigerator and freezer. The freezer is fine. The refrigerator survived, but there is some plastic molding on the left side, where it was close to the burning wood frame and the folding door that bubbled from the heat - just cosmetic. Considering that a good part of the fire was right there, I'm amazed that the refrigerator didn't take a bigger hit.

The architectural headers along the ceiling, now that I've gotten a chance to get in and look at things, are not cement, but rather plaster. They were broken open by the firemen, though not completely destroyed, and I have to replace some of the wood supports that are a bit charred and re-fill the plaster and such to fix that.

We're not sure about the wallpaper in the laundry area yet - it may actually be cleanable. That is weird - not much smoke damage at all, and high up on the wall near the ceiling, on the side opposite from the fire (two meters across) and about a meter to the side, there is a junction box for our doorbell wiring. The cover was thick plastic and was completely twisted and melted by the fire, yet not a bit of damage to the wallpaper even there that we can see! That just seems surreal to me.

In the dining room, a lot of smoke damage on the walls and ceiling. The stained wooden cabinets look like they are going to clean up just fine. Looks like we just have to paint in there, the walls and ceiling, which we were working on today, to get at least something finished and off our plate while we wait for some estimates on the kitchen work

One microwave, completely twisted and exploded.

Some clothes are full of smoke smell, those in the youngest one's room which is closer to the kitchen, but we're thinking a few washes will get rid of the smell. We have smoke smell in the carpeting that runs the length of the apartment, towards the front of the apartment, and some of that carpet was trashed (dirt-wise) by the firemen coming and going and will have to be washed. The wood floors need to be resurfaced in the dining room and the den, mostly from dirty boots and such as well, but that's not a very big deal - we had that done before we moved in.

We were extremely lucky. Had I let it go much more than a couple of more minutes, we would have had much more serious losses.

Of course, the electrician charged 17,500 pesos (you're right Bajo, he's an aprovechedor), but actually a bit more than half that cost is going to be taken by the owners, who wanted to change the ancient breaker box in the hallway out with a new one (we've only been asking for that since we moved in). The rest of it for us will be to re-wire most of the kitchen - the wiring around the junction boxes and outlets near the fire were completely destroyed and new wires must be run back to other junctions or the main box itself. We could have found a cheaper electrician, but we are already in trouble with the consortium and they suggested we use him to make sure there are no troubles and we acquiesced.

We had one estimate today of 13,000 pesos to repair the architectural headers that were broken open and paint the kitchen, which is just 100% ludicrous. I went out and bought ten liters of paint today (roughly a bit smaller than a 5-gallon-sized bucket) for 700 pesos, which easily would paint the dining room, the kitchen, the den and maybe even more (not a whole lot of painted surfaces in the kitchen except higher up on the wall above ceramic tiles and the ceiling, and one wall and the ceiling in the dining room, two walls in the den). I bought the paint and all the tools I need (including fijador, enduido, putty knives, surfacing tool, sandpaper, paint brushes, rollers, extender poles and many other things) for around 2500 pesos. I figure that the work in the kitchen could be done by one guy working two ten-hour days (aside from time to leave the plaster to dry), which at even 200 pesos an hour (which I think may be way too much - I know people that will work for half that but I don't know what the going rate is for sure) would only come out to 4000 pesos! If the guy had to buy everything (including tools) to do the job, the most I can see him charging would be around 6500 pesos, or exactly half of what he proposed to us.

So, we'll be doing the work ourselves (I've been a construction worker in another life) and I have our girls plus their brothers to draw on to help and we may have the majority of the damage fixed up by the middle of next week with a little luck, maybe end of next weekend, minus replacing the kitchen cabinets, which has me a little freaked out as far as cost goes.

 

[ElQueso]

Well, what kind of fire extinguisher is that? I am asking since you said there were electrical circuits involved. I don't know the local law about extinguishers for residential use, but given the limitations of this country i wouldn't be surprised f they had gone for the cheapest option, albeit not safest.

They are powder-filled. I think they would have been alright. Of course, one question is whether or not they even would have worked...

 

[Dada]

I like the way you are dealing with that, every stage