This is not good. What would you feel when you were coming home feeling all content and happy because you've just celebrated the New Year with your family and then all of a sudden, a commotion happens right in front of you as you're parking your car.
That's what happened on January 2. We came home to people running around, shouting and screaming just across the street. At first, we thought there were gang members rioting or neighbors fighting. I then asked Patrick and the kids not to get out of the car in case we need to make a hasty exit from. Then we started to hear people shouting, "Fire! Fire" and that made me nervous. I automatically looked into the sky to see traces of smoke and sure enough, just across our car and the street, there was a blazing fire in one of the buildings. By then, people were running around looking around for the fire trucks. We immediately parked the car in the garage because we didn't want to hinder the passage of the fire trucks. I learned from Patrick that fire trucks have every right to blast their way on the street and if you don't want to get out of the way, then good luck to your car! They've actually done it before too wow!
Patrick took some pictures of the commotion from the street and from our room in the house. Here's a picture of the first fire truck making the scene. It's funny that there are a lot of people hitching a ride on the truck thinking they can help the firemen out. But what firemen want is for them to leave them alone so they can do their job better because sometimes, these people simply get in the way and may end up getting hurt because they don't know what they're doing.
Here's a picture of the fire from our room. It was really scary because I kept remembering that it was the same time last year that we were also in the middle of a scary fire. Remember? A tanker truck blew up in front of the house and for a while we couldn't get out because there's a huge wall of fire outside our gate. whew! really horrifying and even Dana still remembers that night..
The street across the house looked like a parking lot of fire trucks. I pity the vehicles who got caught in the middle of this event because they got stuck in the middle of the fly-over and they couldn't back out.
The fire was put out after 30 minutes maybe but the firefighters stuck around for a lot longer than that. It was really scary but it also made me thankful that it wasn't us and that there weren't any injured people in the accident.
So, while getting ready to go out, we were surprised when visitors arrived. Dimples and Rhys came for a visit and what perfect timing!! We all ended up going to Manila Zoo together and it was a great way to start the year - with close family bonding. It was really a spur of the moment thing otherwise we would have also invited Stevie, Toni and the kids with us. It's been a long time since we saw these two and I am glad they dropped by :)
