Its about 6:45am on a Sunday morning. Everyone is sound asleep, which we've been looking forward given all the christmas activties that have been going on. The fire alarm sounds in the apartment... again. (This is the third time in about 6 months that we've evacuated when the fire alarm went off - but thats another story).

Both of us get out of bed. Simone's a bit panicky and worried about her sister Steph, who is also staying with us. I immediately head for the front door to see what is going on. One step into the lounge room and I hit a puddle. A big puddle. Maybe a small lake. Simone is yelling at Steph to get dressed, and they've both now realised that we have a new water feature installed in our apartment. More panic.

So we very quickly dressed and leave the lake in our apartment to head towards the fire escape. No smoke today (there was last time), so I'm a bit less stressed, and trying to calm Simone down. Then we arrive at the fire escape, and when Simone tries to open it she realises she's pushing against a torrent of water. The water is coming in through the fire escape! More panic.

Someone else in our corridoor seems less panicked. They're standing around munching on some toast, and offer us a slice. I decline, and guide Simone and Steph around to the fire escape on the other side of the floor. Water may be less scary than fire, but I've got two quite stressed ladies on my hand buddy. The other fire escape is clear, so we head downstairs.

We passed some firemen in the fire escape on the way down, and pretty soon we hit the street they come back down too. Turns out some prankster has turned on the fire hydrant in the fire escape between levels four and five. Those suckers can push out water pretty fast. They've turned it off though, and we can can go back up the lift. The ride up was quite weird, because we could hear the water gushing all around the lift.

Back inside the apartment, we discover our water feature has expanded to be a lake nearly an inch deep throughout most of the apartment. I immediately set about unplugging every electrical item I can find, and Simone starts moving things away from the water. Most of the cables for the TV and computer were in power boards resting on the ground, so I'm glad we didn't get any shocks or electrical fires. I discovered later that our safety switch had kicked in (thank goodness!), and so far (its only been a few hours) everything I've tried has been ok once it dried out.

Whilst all of the electrical gear was being moved, our apartment is slowly getting more water in it. As it turns out, we are the lowest point on the floor, so get more water than anyone else. We are continuously moving furniture to try and keep it dry.

Our losing battle against the water goes on for 15 or 20 mins, when the clean-up crew from the fire department arrives. Hooray! These people were all fantastic, and brought with them a bunch of squeegees to help clean up. We just started to make some headway when another call came through - a hotel in Surrey Hills is one fire. They rush off, but leave the squeegees with us to keep going.

We spend an hour or so trying to move water out of the apartment, and around into the fire stairs so it can drain down to the basement. Pretty exhausting stuff. Finally another clean-up crew arrives, brining an insdustrial size water-sucker with them. When they make it to our apartment, four of them get in and we fairly quickly get upgraded from a lake to just having that nice squelching sound in the carpet as you walk around.

Cleaners eventually arrive on the scene, and make some attempt to dry the place out. They tell me our aprtment is the worst one, and we'll probably need three blowers (industrial sized hair-dryers - but not quite so hot) on in the apartment for a couple of days. Vacuuming up the water helps, but the carpet is still quite damp.

*sigh* - maybe we'll get to sleep in next weekend...