darkholme

Fire! Fire! Fire!

Wah, tonight must blog something exciting, because exciting stuff rarely happens in my life. :)

After a really good meal at Daphne's place, I was sitting in her room, surfing the web when Daphne's mum calls me quite urgently. I go to see what's the matter and it turns out that the TV in her mum's room is giving off some smoke! Yikes!

Not really knowing what to do, I try and see what could be causing the smoke. I realise that the TV is still plugged into the power socket. Oh no! Must prevent electrical fire! So I look around the room quickly, trying to find a non-conductor so that I can turn off the switch. Why is it that you can't find anything when you need it? Thankfully, I see a newspaper and quickly roll it up and gingerly turn off the switch. Ok, power supply cut off. Now to be safe, we should unplug the TV.

In the meantime... Daphne goes online to check out if there are any non-emergency phone numbers we can call for help. She checks out the SCDF website and they have a whole list of numbers. Unfortunately, the Fire Safety Consultation hotline (1800 734 4308) directs her to a voice mailbox!! She calls up the General Enquiries number (6280 0000) and talks to someone, who just takes down the details and tells us to monitor the situation and call back if there's any problem.

Throughout this, I find that I'm rather calm and I try to have a calming effect on Daphne's mum, who is quite worried. That's to my credit. Unfortunately, to my discredit, I'm too chicken to unplug the power socket. *embarrassed* Good thing that Daphne's maid, Gina, was brave enough to use rubber gloves and unplug the socket. So paiseh.

Anyway, the smoke is still coming out so we call the condo's security guard to come up. He has a look and it and informs us that we're all safe now that the TV has been unplugged. The smoke disappates and he leaves us with a fire extinguisher just in case.

Looking back, I remember feeling quite excited because I just recently took part in a 1-day Community Emergency Preparedness Programme conducted by the SCDF. You can read more about it at shannatic's blog post. We learnt CPR and basic First Aid as well as fire safety at that course. I was remembering all the things that we covered! I strongly encourage all of you readers to take part in similar programmes, so that you can be more prepared in times of emergency. Find out more at the SCDF Community Emergency Preparedness Programme webpage.

Good thing we were home though. I can't imagine what might have happened if no one was home when this happened!

So yeah, that's the exciting thing that happened tonight :)

posted by kelvin @ 8:42 pm