I was in the middle of making dinner when the doorbell rang. Checking my WhatsApp messages as I walked to the front door, the first message I noticed was from our housing complex resident's group which said, in all caps, "PLEASE DO NOT USE THE TOWER-5 lifts" (we live in tower 5). Before I could even process this information, I slipped hard on the floor; there was water all over our entryway--that I hadn't noticed because I was looking at my phone. I got back up and opened the door to find the entire hallway flooded, water raining down the stairwell, and the helper from across the hall desperately sweeping the water out of their apartment. (I think that's actually why our apartment got water in the entryway--because they were unintentionally sweeping water under our doorway.) The helper was the one that rang our doorbell to warn us about the water.
The water was not too far into our apartment, but I moved our rug and whatever else out of the way. I rang our next door neighbor's apartment to let them know in case they didn't already (they did--apparently I was the last to know on the floor), and got towels to sop up the water in our entryway and to block any more from coming in.
It's too bad none of the videos will load
because this picture does not do it justice!
At this point, the kids would be home any minute and, unless they wanted to get drenched trying to go up the stairs, that wasn't good. I quickly messaged a friend in another tower to see if I could send the kids to her and then went onto the balcony to catch them before they tried to come up. Luckily, I didn't have to wait long, and was able to yell down to tell them whose house to go to until the water stopped. And then I went back to the hallway to wait for more information or for the water to stop, whatever came first.
Brandon--of course I'd been keeping him informed!--had the smart idea that I should check the office because it also had a door into the hallway, which was mostly blocked by our boxes of storage. I ran upstairs, moved all the storage out of the way and didn't see any water inside, but opened the hallway door just in case. Strangely, it seemed like there was even less water on this floor than the one below, but clearly, disaster was averted. We were lucky: we learned that there were a few apartments had water go all the way into their living rooms.
In the end, we found out a fire sprinkler pipe had burst on the 10th floor (we live on the 3rd) and it took about 20 minutes before management was finally able to turn the water off. It then it took another 20 minutes or so before the water stopped pouring down to the floors below.
Once it was clear that the water was stopping and housekeeping was hard at work sloshing the water down to lower floors, I messaged my friend that she could send the kids home and I went back to making dinner, just like it was a normal day. Aside from bruising my knee, we came out unscathed, and chalked it up to another one of those India moments we never thought we'd have.
