Last night I was dispatched to a welfare check. Usually, a welfare check drops when someone is worried about another person for one reason or another and wants us to check on them. Maybe the person did not show up for work or missed an appointment. Maybe that person has talked recently about suicide. However, the call last night was not usual. The call slip said that at midnight, downstairs neighbor Laverne (names have been changed), was worried about her elderly upstairs neighbor, Shirley. Laverne had tried calling Shirley and knocking on her door. Shirley's car was parked in the complex's parking lot so she assumed that Shirley should be home. So far, a normal welfare check call. Now, you are wondering as I was, why was Laverne trying to contact Shirley at midnight? Maybe some hot gossip, have some wine, watch a movie? Nope, nope, and nope.
Shirley lives directly upstairs from Laverne. Laverne got into bed at 10 PM and was pleased with herself that she had gotten to bed so early. A short time later, Laverne heard what she thought was rain outside of the sliding glass door that is in her bedroom. A few minutes later, Laverne started to feel the rain. She looked up and water started pouring down onto her bed from the running ceiling fan. It was not a drip, not a trickle, but a good sized stream of hot water was flowing out of the fan. Laverne thought that she could hear a faucet running and her imagination started running wild. She thought that her upstairs neighbor, Shirley had turned on the water in her bathroom and then slipped and fell and hit her head and knocked herself out. The water had continued to run until it was overflowing and found a way down through her fan. Sounds reasonable, at least when your fan is raining on you.
So, Laverne called us to come and check on Shirley. I knocked on her door and banged on her windows. Laverne kept trying to call Shirley. After about 10 minutes of this, we heard some noise from inside Shirley's apartment. A conversation ensued. She asked who was at her door? The police. Why are the police at my door? Please open the door and we will explain everything to you. But, I am scared to open the door. How do I know you are the police? Use your peep hole and check out the snazzy uniform. That did the trick and Shirley opened her door. We explained about the water and she let us check her apartment. There was no overflowing running water coming from her apartment. We apologized for scaring her. She understood and was pleased that her neighbors cared enough to check on her. At about that same time, Fonzie, the land lord showed up in his Porsche. We met Fonzie at the affected apartment and showed him the water. Now, it was starting to pool along the edges of the room and small trickles were starting to come down the walls. We asked the Fonz if he knew where the water shut off valves were located since we could not find them. He had no idea, which was not entirely surprising. A short time later, I checked on the flow of water again and it had decreased dramatically. I am not a plumber nor do I play one on TV, but I think that it was a hot water heater that let go or burst. That would explain the hot water. It would also explain the flow of water ebbing, since hot water heaters only hold so much water. To Laverne's credit, she was taking it well and trying to laugh about it. It was hard not to laugh. It is not every day that you see flowing water being thrown all over a room by a running ceiling fan.
Posted via email from will7079's posterous
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