This is NOT a drill: fire in the galley?

I don’t think I’m supposed to post on the internet the exact time and date of Mercy Ships fire drills, but I will say that our theoretically “spontaneous” fire drills always happen on a routine schedule. To be honest, fire drills are pretty boring affairs for everyone except the emergency teams. The alarm goes off, the captain comes on the overhead with the familiar “This is a drill, this is a drill…”, and the emergency teams reenact prepared emergency scenarios. But for us normal people, we just have to go outside—under the hot African sun—and stand at our “muster stations” for anywhere between half an hour to an hour, until the captain announces that the drill is finished. Basically everyone knows when to expect them, so those who are on the ship usually come prepared with a book or a towel to sit on; if you’re lucky enough not to be working that day, you get off ship (and go to the pool at Sarakawa, like the other team does) to avoid the tedious fire drill.

So this morning, I’m doing my thing, a-working away in the galley, and a piercing alarm goes off—an alarm that sounds surprisingly like the crew alert alarm that begins our fire drills. I didn’t think much of it, until I realized that this wasn’t on the day or hour that I’m supposed to expect it. Two minutes later, the captain comes on the PA, and announces, “This is NOT a drill… There is a fire in the galley.”

Whaaat?? …I’m IN the galley!

I look over on the hot side, and they’re all looking back at me in surprise, and their looks all say, “Where’s this fire?”. And even more strangely, when I look down, there’s not fire , but water flooding our floors. Turns out, there was some sort of electrical problem and a switch went off to activate the sprinkler system in our walk-in dairy fridge, which then activated the fire alarm. Who would’ve known that such a tiny sprinkler could produce a massive stream of water? By the time I got over to the dairy fridge, there was water just completely pouring out of the sprinkler, and the emergency team and some of our galley staff were holding up trash bins up to the sprinkler, trying desperately to keep the heavy stream of water from completely flooding our floors— and in the meantime, getting completely soaked themselves. I mean, they were just getting absolutely soaking wet, which I guess is what naturally happens when you stand directly below a sprinkler (who would’ve known). I ran to grab my camera to see if I could get a photo of all the commotion, but once I had it, I felt really awkward trying to stick my camera out in front of the emergency team amidst all the commotion. Plus, I felt like I'd just be reaffirming my Asian stereotype. So I took one photo, which doesn't do justice at all to the crazy scene that was the "fire"-- you can't see anything and all the water steamed up my lens-- but here it is anyway.

Luckily, Jens, one of the ship’s carpenters, was in the process of making some proper shelving for the dairy fridge, so most of the stuff inside of it had already been moved to our vegetable fridge. Unluckily (so very, very unluckily), the sprinkler in the vegetable fridge was also set off while they were trying to test the alarm/sprinkler/electrical wiring in the aftermath of the dairy-fridge-fiasco (Fieroasco). The amount of water wasn’t nearly as bad in this fridge as the amount we had in the dairy fridge, but it was still enough to require the complete washing down of all the food in the fridge (and the water ruined all the cardboard boxes storing said food). So that’s what my team did this afternoon: we heaved everything (EVERYTHING) out of that fridge, rinsed down with bleach, wiped down every shelf in that giant fridge, and then put everything back in place. Doesn’t sound too difficult when I sum it up in a sentence like that, but it really, and truly, sucked. BAH. An exciting morning that met a fateful, completely not-exciting end.

Of course, after we did all that, the electricians were still testing the wiring. I stood hovering around, watching them really nervously, with what I'm sure was a completely pathetic look on my face. So Jesse (the head chef) went up to the electrician who was about to check the sprinkler pressure and asked him if there was any chance the sprinkler in the vegetable fridge would go off during the night. The electrician thinks for a second, shrugs his shoulders, and goes, “Maybe,”-- to which Jesse replies, “You have to make sure that it doesn’t. If it does, she,” and he turns and points to me for emphasis, “will kill you.”