How to Meet the Neighbors

I'm happy to report that I've met nearly everybody in my new neighborhood, and that the neighborhood is still standing. On Monday (July 29) I arrived at my new house at about 8pm to haul some of the debris from the redecorating efforts to the curb for garbage pickup. When I walked into the house, I smelled a strong odor of gas. I unlocked the back door and rushed over to a man in his yard -- he called the gas company on his cell phone and handed it to me. Before I even hung up, the local fire department had arrived, summoned by my next door neighbor on the right. They determined that there was an imanent danger of explosion, and evacuated the entire
block.

The fire department had to tear open my attic to clear the gas build-up there. The leak was eventually traced to a coupling between two gas pipes. Instead of proper materials, a water-shutoff valve had been used to compensate for the fact that the pipes were too short. This water shutoff had a plug to allow water to drain out of a stopped pipe -- this plug had come out, and the result was a stream of gas equivelent to "blowing through a soda straw just as hard as you could". Had I set out my garbage Sunday night and skipped my Monday visit, the entire block would have turned into a crater, no doubt featured on national TV. Had I already moved in, the gas would have killed Tara while I was at work. Had the elderly lady who sold me the house still been in residence, she likely would have been killed because the gas rapidly concentrated to lethal levels.

We remained "evacuated" from about 8:11pm to close to 11:30. My neighbors were grumpy over the disruption, but most were friendly. I spent most of the time with a neighbor kiddy-corner across the street, his wife, his married daughter and her kids. He has another married child living on the street, but they had taken refuge at the other end of the block. One result is everybody knows me and all the kids wave to me when they ride by on their bicycles.

I was held up until midnight in order to sign papers for the fire department and Illinois Power. Then I got back to my apartment and found the kitchen flooded. It was well after 3am that the apartment handyman unclogged the drain and vaccumed all the water that my upstairs neighbor had used out of the kitchen. This has not helped the mildew smell in the kitchen and since the storage drawers next to the sink also filled with grey nasty water, everything in them needs to be washed.

The gas leak was repaired yesterday (Tuesday). Electric power was restored today. I've found a good local carpenter. He made a temporary repair to the attic to seal it against weather, and he should be able to fix the decks so the stairs are easier for me to manage. He also has good ideas on how to revamp the bathroom cheaply. This is important as I doubt I will have as much to spend on this as I'd hoped, because extensive work remains to be done in the attic.