When facing an emergency: house fire, locked out, water pipe burst at home… what would you do?
I live in a high rise apartment, which is located in a beautiful mature community. There is water plug on the west wall of my nice balcony. It may be intended for installing a wash machine once upon a time. It seems never has been used. This sunny afternoon, the water plug decided to bounce out of the water pipe from the wall and enjoy the warm nice sunshine…
I was at home, luckily. But I was the only one at home at this very moment. I used my fingers and palm to stop the water from shooting to my curtains, tea table, book shelf on the balcony. How am I going to stop the water without using my hands? How can I reduce the water damage to our belongings and neighbor?
I run into the bathroom, pulled out a basin to deflect the water from shooting everywhere, and called my building manager. She is my angel. She run to my building, climbed to my high floor, turned off the faucet from the control room, and called our maintenance guy. She did all these smoothly and quickly. Then she helped me cleaned out the water on the balcony. The maintenance guy told me it’s an old plastic plug, it’s due for replacement…
This reminds me another emergency happened a few months ago.
It was a warm nice day in May. My daughter went out for a run in the afternoon. I was at work. She texted me and said she was locked out. Her key could not unlock the door. I harried home. My key did not work either. My husband was on a trip. We run out of luck to get in.
Then I spotted the locksmith phone number on my door. Is this legit number? I called the building manager. She gave me a police office number to get a registered locksmith. It turned out it is the same number on my door!
Within 15 minutes, he came, showed us his ID, and replace our lock…
Emergencies do happen in life.
When emergency happens,
- you need make quick decisions, be decisive to reduce potential damage, risk
- You need help and support from people you trust
- Community’s support is important, have yourself surrounded a reliable community, a circle, a capable group
Deal with emergency is a collective action. It takes an army.
WE-FIVE 