Post #50668 by mrsmiley on Tue, Sep 9, 2003 4:33 AM

I get a call from Tikihag about 1am (I wasn't home) and she tells me the the dishwasher is making a funny sound and water is gushing all over the kitchen floor. Soon she runs out out towels and the buckets are filling up so she goes downstairs to toss the wate r out and to her horror the water is coming throught the kitchen floor into the Ugh Tiki bar ceiling light fixtures and flooding the tiki bar! The water is dumping all over my Tiki book collection so she grabs the soaked books and moves them out of the way to prevent further damage. Then she has to start moving all my darn tikis that are in the way so she can get the buckets under the gushing water (it was like a garden hose coming out of the ceiling).
All the years we lived here we never really had the emergency walk around to find the gas and water shutoffs-important in earthquake country (bad move on our part).
As I arrive to the house (oops-I'm still parked half on the sidewalk!) , she is talking to an all night plumber who tells her the valve should be in front of the house. (it was). I grab a flashlight and turn the water off.
Most of the water leaked through the floor to the tiki bar below. I go down stairs and notice that 15 of my Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman records are wet. The water is moving towards piles of other Hawaiian records! We start grabbing and moving whatever we can to get them off the floor. I have to lift my Tiki, "Dong Ho" so I can rearrange the bucckets because the water is now dripping through the tapa clothes on the ceiling.
As the water stops we have time to access the damage-record albums, flooring, about 25 tiki books(including a signed Trader Vics), and who knows what else because I am so hot, sweaty and tired at 3:30 in the morning. Some of the books are worse of than others, but they are all fcked up. Goodnight for know-what a fckin mess!! And we are going to be short 4-5 people (about 25% staff) at work tommorrow. Joy joy.