and this past Friday night I had a date with 2 fire trucks, 1 ladder truck, 1 ambulance, 2 military police officers, 1 housing manager, 1 facility maintenance worker, 2 plumbers, various other people of authority, a few neighbors, Kahuna and the puppies.
Last weekend Kahuna bought our flat screen TV. On Tuesday he started checking out of his current unit and when he got to Base Housing they told us we had to move out of housing. On Wednesday he went to the management office of the company who had taken over part of military housing. He spoke to a man there that told him we would not have to move, there were a lot of people living in their housing that worked on a couple of different bases, and besides those of us living in the area where we lived never caused any trouble.
Kahuna has been under the weather all last week so he’s been spending some time in bed when not at work. Friday he was feeling better, and had ½ the day off for Christmas, so he got out the instructions for the wall hanging jobber for the TV and figured out what needed to be done. He needed another pair of hands so waited on me to get off work. He had been feeling better earlier and was going to swim with me so I went home instead of straight to the gym. When I got there he was in bed, so I decided we’d tank the swim for now and work on the TV and I’d go swim later.
He had already removed everything out of the way, so all we needed to do was find the studs and get hanging. When we were looking for the studs he was having trouble with his stud-finder. It was register the stud coming from one direction, but when he’d go to confirm it from the other direction it would “hit” about 3 inches off. He got ticked off with his cheaper finder, tossed it across the room with a few choice words, and went and got the big guns. By this time the puppies had gotten bored with what we were doing and had trotted off down the hall to get under the covers. The new stud finder seemed to work better. Once it registered, finding the first direction mentioned above, he confirmed it, got a slight hit, then a stronger one 3″ over on the original direction, and marked that spot.
I had stepped into the kitchen to turn the fire down on the stove because I had forgotten I was heating up some leftover stew and could hear him start to drill. When I came back around the corner into the living room he was grumbling about the drill not working properly and thought he was drilling “backwards.” He checked the direction and went at it again, but was having trouble drilling into the stud. By this time I was standing shoulder to shoulder with him ready to hand him something (I cannot remember what I was holding).
He was pushing for all he was worth against the drill to get it to go in. I remember thinking at the time that he must have found a nail head, when the drill suddenly went in. As soon as he pulled it out we both heard the angry hiss of gas, looked at each other and ran in opposite directions. Him out the front door, me out the back slider, into a locked back yard. Of course the puppies are still snuggled up under the covers, the stove is still burning and the gas heater is going.
I went back into the house, where the smell of gas was already so strong, and yelled for the dogs as I ran into the kitchen and hit the knob on the stove to turn it off. Bandit came running followed quickly by Harley. I got them to follow me back out the slider but I couldn’t breath well enough to find the closure to the doggie door and I knew that if I didn’t catch them they’d head back inside because it was cold outside. I managed to catch Bandit’s collar but as soon as Harley saw that she thought we were playing chase and immediately started to run from me every time I got near her.
All this time all I could think about was me squatting in front of a 6′ plate glass window and glass slider and the house filling with gas which could explode at any second because the heater was still going, and I knew it was bad because I could start to smell the gas coming out of the doggie door. I got down on my knees and asked God to please let me catch my girl before the house blew up and cut us to shreds. She walked over to me and put her feet on my chest, I scooped her up and pulled Bandit by his collar as far away from the house as I could get (which isn’t very far).
All the dogs in the neighborhood were barking. Not a single neighbor came out to see why, which is so weird since they always do. I had no idea where Kahuna was or what was going on and I couldn’t get out of the backyard because we keep the gate padlocked to keep people from letting the dogs out. I was dressed in very thin clothing (normally would be my pj’s) and was starting to get cold, but more than anything I was scared. The girl that lives behind me finally came out to smoke, I told her what was going on, she put her cigarette out and told me she could see Kahuna from where she was standing. He was with our next door neighbor trying to turn the gas off but when maintenance had painted our house a few years back they had painted over the knobs and he couldn’t get them to turn with what tools the neighbor had. Of course we had a wrench heavy-duty enough to do this in our garage.
I found out later that Kahuna had gone back into the house to grab his cellphone to call 911 and turn off the heater and had left the front door open on his way back out. I managed to get the girl to get Kahuna to come and get the puppies and our next door neighbor kenneled his dogs and let ours run in his backyard. I don’t remember how I did it but I managed to get back into the house a 2nd time to find the closure for the doggie door. I remember saying over and over “Oh, God, please., Oh, God, please.” Poor Harley could see me in our yard and stood in the corner of their yard crying for me to come and get her. I think talking to her kept me calm, because I really was starting to freak out that I couldn’t get out of the yard.
Kahuna finally came back to talk to me and brought me his surf “cape” he changes under to help me keep warm. The fire trucks had arrived a bit before that but I had no idea what was going on. I could tell they were in the house because I could see the lights they wear flashing across the closed blinds. One of them finally came to the gate with bolt cutters so I could get out.
My front yard looked like something out of a movie. The street was blocked off at both ends, curious neighbors across the street were told to go back inside by the MP’s. The neighbor who shares our duplex was out front and his wife had taken their daughter away to a movie when she found out what was happening. The other neighbor’s wife and 2 kids were out shopping and were phoned to not come home right now. There were fire hoses going everywhere. My neighbor told me when the firemen had arrived the gas was bad enough they thought there would be an explosion so had pulled out the hoses and hooked them to the hydrant. I think what kept that from happening was Kahuna leaving the front door open after his trip back inside.
They set up these huge turbine-type fans in every room, opened all the windows and blew the gas out of the house. I had the bathroom door closed in my bedroom and once I got back into the house I went in there and could not believe how much gas was in that room. They had not opened the door.
Remember the man at the management office that had told Kahuna on Wednesday that we could stay….he’s the one who was on duty and came to see what was going on in our normally quiet housing area and he laughed when he saw whose house it was because he remembered Kahuna. He also arranged for 2 plumbers to come and tear a hole in the wall and replace the pipe we had drilled into so we, and the other side of the duplex, would not be without heat and hot water. I will be forever thankful for those 2 men.
I’m also thankful I believe in prayer.
I’ve tried to write about this for 2 days and even now on Monday, I’ve had to wipe away the tears re-living this. We tried to go about our normal lives on Saturday and Sunday. I couldn’t even talk about it to friends we met for dinner and a movie. I’ve played so many “what-ifs” over and over in my head. The main one was what-if pulling that drill out had caused a spark with the two of us stupidly standing side by side right in front of that gas line that I feel I should have known was there.
Later that evening when we were cleaning up the mess left from the firemen’s boots and the plumbers’ saws, etc., I found the stud-finder Kahuna had tossed across the room. We both kind of chuckled as I told him to apologize to it and put it in a safe place. It tried to do its job, we just didn’t listen.
Last night we watched our new TV. It works just fine not hanging on the wall.
I never did swim and we’re moving in April, after Kahuna’s half ironman.
Merry Christmas!
