3 weeks ago Chris was in Dallas/Texas again for a business trip. The trip should last from early Monday morning (he needed to get up at 4:30 a.m) to late Wednesday evening (being home by 9 p.m.)....but things did go a little different - again.
Somehow, there's always something with the fish tanks. Last time Chris was in Texas, we had (or should I say I had) an almost overflowing fish tank since I constantly added water since the waterlevel was low in one of the tank's refusiums (you know, we have salt water fish tanks, the fancy ones) but I totally oversaw that another bassin within the refusium was almost overflowing with water due to a moss screen thing that filters the water (like a damm, flowing from the higher level bassin into the lower level one). The filter was full with - hm - dirt or algae of whatever you find down in the refusium's filter....anyway, Chris came home that day and was totally angry becasue first thing he needed to do after a 3 day trip was rescuing the fish tank.
And now this:
I cuddled with Jonah in bed for 30 minutes at 6:30 a.m. when the alarm in the entire house got off! That is a constant beep that hurts your ears. And it gets off in every room, not just in the room something happened. So I got the dogs and Jonah out of the bedroom, got Dudu out of her bed (luckily she was already awake - I mean, nobody can stay asleep with that noise!) and ran downstairs through the house to the backyard. In the kitchen was a definite smell of something burning/smoking...when I opened the back yard door to let everybody go outside, I could actually see the smoke....I got back to get the phone to call 911, our emergency hotline (112 in Germany)...while I called the emergency, Jonah opened the door from outside and wanted to come back inside, to see what I am doing.
While talking to the guy on the phone of what happened and how many people are safe, I got outside again with Jonah. The guy said that he will inform the fire station ... outside I realized that I was still in underwear (luckily wearing a T-Shirt though) but I was too afraid to go back inside the house to get a pair of pants for myself.
I really thought once I race through the house, go upstairs, run through the house, get a pair of pants, back through the house, back down, back through the house, the kitchen would be on fire and the kids back inside since they were looking for me....therefore, I got as dressed as I was into the front yard (so that the emergency could see that all inhabitants were healthy and safe).
I even got a better idea (still worried about my dress-up style) and hurried over the street , half naked, with two kids in pyjamas and a phone in my hand to get to my neighbor Cindy, who has 3 kids on her own and one on the way. I knew that my kids would be entertained by her while I was begging her for a pair of pants!
Back outside, I could hear the emergency coming but going into my neighborhood they stopped the sirene (probably they did not want to wake up people when the streets are clear anyway).
Within 3 minutes, there were 2 fire engines, one paramedic (Notarzt), one chief officer's car and two police cars in our street and nothing was on fire (as far as I could tell). I mean, with what equipment do they show up for serious emergencies?
Anyway, so I had the entire 911 team of Broomfield sitting in front of my house!
I introduced myself to the first guy I saw (everybody of course fully equipped in all their fancy gear), opened the front door and let the people inside. Nobody told me to wait outside so I entered, too, to grab my camera (at least you can rescue a camera, no?) to make some pictures of this 'adventure'.
I told the people that I have to Boxer dogs outside in the backyard but that they are friendly and that the firemen could enter the yard...well, I did not think about Tobi's guarding behaviour...still in the house with the camera I heard barking going on, rushed through my backdoor into the backyard just to see two firemen as big and strong as trees in front of the gate, Tobi furosious barking at them, hairs standing. I almost peed into Cindy's pants because I needed to laugh. I told the guys just to enter, that the dog would not harm them! It would take Tobi a while anyway to bite through their shoes or fire proof pants!
Nellie was directly coming towards me, and when I yelled 'Fuss!' (heel) at Tobi he was coming, too! Still looking back what the men were doing....so they entered the yard finally to go to the fuse box to switch off the main power of the house.
At this very moment I had the first chance to call Chris, when the fire men switched off the power. My poor husband only heard from me that I called 911 because of smoke when the phone went dead.
I got to the front, saw my neighbor Lisa on the street, rushed to her and asked her if I can call Chris from their phone. So we went inside their study and I wondered why Greg, Lisa's husband' was not there. She said that Greg's still sleeping...during all that commotion!
So, with Chris on the phone the firemen were looking for me since they found the culprit. It was the fishtank in the TV room opposite the kitchen. One of the many cable divider things was smoking... and could have started a fire any moment due to the carpet and dry wall....
Once all the firemen left, I saw Greg standing with Lisa on the sidewalk by his house and I asked him how on earth he could sleep throu all this? He said that he actually woke up because of a dog barking furiouslously..I needed to laugh, that sounded like Tobi defending out back yard of the firemen!
Greg and I later called Chris again to find out what cables we needed to hook back on so that neither the fish nor the rock, corals or anemonies die. The firemen told me not to use the outlet in the wall where the burned extension cord was plugged in so we needed to get some other extension cords out to supply the fish tank with power.
Everything seemed to work fine when I saw after one hour a suicidal fish being stuck in one overflow pump container thing. Now I needed to get the big fish out somehow! And I hate touching fish....but I needed to pull him out by the back fin and luckily he helped me in wiggling a lot and jumping back into the big water...he survived just fine!
Chris came back home this very evening in getting out of Dallas a day earlier and we came to the conclusion that this overvlow skimmer tank was not adjusted right, it overflow over the back of the fish tank and water drop onto the underlaying extension cord.
Luckily I was home (even all of this was kind of unpleasant!) and could save the dogs, otherwise nobody would probably heard the alarm beeping (and the dogs wouldn't have any chance to go into a room without this beeping) and the house would have caught fire!
So we came out of this situation just fine, learned a lot and worked on all three fish tanks so that this does not happen again!
