Just before summertime, our property owner puts up a notice in our building saying that an inspector will come to check the fire extinguisher in our apartment.
In all the years that I have lived here, I have never learned how to use a fire extinguisher and most probably would smother the firefighters with foam in a panic if they ever come knocking at my door to put out a fire.
The fire extinguisher, a black cylinder, hangs on the kitchen wall next to the fridge. It says Carbon Dioxide 2kgs, in bold white letters on a black background. I had thought that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas that was emitted into the atmosphere due to human activity such as you driving to your office in your gas-guzzler or when you fire up the barbecue on the balcony on the weekend. Underneath this disconcerting sign are a sequence of pictures with brief captions.
1. Pull safety pin, it says. I asked my son what he would do if I set the kitchen on fire while trying to make Thai satay, the yummy sliced and diced grilled chicken. “I will call 900,” he said. “I am sure you need to call 997 for fire,” I said.
“Here, hold this while I pull the pin,” I told my son.
“No, no,” shouted my wife from across the room. “The maid is off today and I can’t clean up the foamy mess you will make,” she said.
“How do you know it will shoot out foam and not dry ice flakes?” I asked. “People go through life not learning anything new and useful,” I mumbled under my breath, as the extinguisher felt heavier in my hands.
At the back of this black cylinder a sticker said: ‘Inspected by (someone named) Khalid’. And, Status: ‘OK’ — apparently meaning that it is full of carbon dioxide and ready to be fired away at some nasty blaze. The mysterious Khalid had written ‘OK’ many times in one column on the sticker and I just realised that I had never met him or asked him how to use the fire extinguisher.
2. Point nozzle at base of fire, it said. I am sure I will never be able to remember that when the orange flames start licking the ceiling. The nozzle was something like the klaxons you get at football matches that make irritating honking sounds.
3. Squeeze levers, it said. The levers were like the jumper cable pincers that help recharge your dead battery. I am scared of jumper cables because one day I had accidently attached the pincer to the battery’s negative pin, instead of the positive one.
Bit irritating
As soon as I touched the pin, sparks flew out and I realised that I had nearly shocked myself silly.
It may be a coincidence or I may be imagining things, but every summer there are huge fires reported all across the emirates.
Since everyone is a journo now, or something called a Citizen Journalist, the Twitter feeds start pouring in: “OMG, you can see the smoke in Dubai from the fire in Sharjah,” tweets a motorist while on her morning commute.
It is a bit irritating that I spent two years of my life learning how to write a report, how to capture the interest of the reader, about how the government functions and about social responsibility and journalism ethics ... and now, anyone with a smartphone can do the job I was trained to do.
Anyway, the civil defence authorities believe that some of the fires are started deliberately by warehouse owners to cash in on the insurance money. To stop this nefarious activity, firefighters are thinking of making them pay every time they are called to put out the fires.
