🔥 Late Night House Fire in Our Village, Total Loss 🛖 Steung Kach, Cambodia
Three weeks ago my neighbor's shack caught fire in the middle of the night and the whole village came to watch it burn during a rainstorm.
🔥 Fire On The Mountain ⛰️
Strangely enough this incident occurred in the wee hours of the morning while I was falling asleep at my desk. I had just agreed with myself to stop posting from my blog and focus more on keeping a clean house, preparing school lunches for the girls, getting enough sleep, and being an active dad until I could get life in better order. Life's strange poetry landed a frantic knock on our door with much shouting, and I rushed to the door thinking it would be Mey-Yii crying because her Grandma had hit her, locked her out, or both.
Luckily or unluckily this wasn't the case, it was our slightly nearer neighbor telling us of the drama unfolding. I got as dressed as possible and then jogged up the highway thinking I would be part of a hopeless attempt to put out the fire. By the time I got there it was already engulfed, the pregnant mother had gotten all of the children out after a faulty electric plug caught fire.
⛽ Adding Fuel To The Fire 🔥
The husband was berating the wife because he felt she could've put out the fire or tossed the wire out of the house and prevented this disaster. The shack wasn't important, but it did serve as their house because it was conveniently located next to the road and the wife sold snacks and fuel from the place. The family had already relocated to their other house, a two-story massive wooden structure that's partially finished.
We have no running water in the village, at least most homes don't, and even though the river is only a few meters from the shack, it's a whitewater torrent and a steep drop, so not a good source of water to try and put out a fire. All this was going on during a rainstorm to make things even stranger, the very thing needed to put out the flames was falling from the sky.
Document It 📸
I walked back home to get my phone for pics once I realized it was now just a show for all to watch, and we donated a few some blankets and other things to help out for a rough night's sleep. The owner of this place had just recently gone into gambling debt and sold the piece of land behind our house, site of the natural swimming pool. He also sold some other things, a motorbike if I remember correctly, so giving money isn't exactly a good idea in a village with gambling problems.
Several of us watched the fire and chatted with the owner, even got to hear some propane tanks explode, very similar to a Hollywood action movie. Despite the shack being of little value, the contents were commercial refrigerators, gas bottles, various products for sale and stock, personal items, and many other things, most of it lost in the fire.
A Very Hot Spirit House 🛕
I noticed the traditional mini spirit house was facing the fire, and had to take a picture of this strange coincidence. It was terribly beautiful in a way.
After some time I realized in only a few hours I would have to take the kids to school, and I was soaked from the rain, so I decided to call it a night and sleep for about 45 minutes.
Just as I prepared to walk back home, the fire raged again after something ignited and gave everyone a light show. Just a normal day in Cambodia, standing in a rainstorm in the middle of a night between the shoulder of a highway and a guardrail at bottom of a blind downhill corner while watching gas bottles explode, complete with umbrellas.
Village Drama 🎭
I will never understand how Khmers spend their days watching drama shows when there is already so much drama in daily life, but I guess the drama onscreen is basically harmless, usually really rich people with whiter skin than mine arguing with each other while perfectly dressed and in perfect houses. If the dramas on tv reflected the real situations affecting Cambodian households, I might actually watch tv now and then.
Fast forward a few hours and these are the results after I dropped the kids off here after school. Three weeks have passed since I took these pics, but no need to worry, the family is already putting the finishing touches on the massive two-story house, are living there, and may or may not rebuild the roadside shack again.
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If there was fuel in or around the shack that had gotten burned down, only using water is not enough to put out the fire I gather.
I read about this fire in one of Sreypov's stories and thanks for giving the update, that they at least have shelter.
So, even though I had my own kind of drama during my adolescence, I liked watching teen dramas on tv, because it at least distracted me from my own 😂. !LOL
You're right, there was no saving the building perhaps even with a hose. We definitely need a village fire extinguisher, but even getting everyone to chip in buying one and arranging a public place to put it would like herding snakes. The only sense of community revolves around gambling and getting wasted, haha.
I think you're right about the drama shows, but the Cambodian ones are intense, I can't sit through and episode, but telenovelas aren't bad, I even watched "One Life To Live" and "General Hospital" when I was a kid back in the USA.
Yeah, that's unfortunate and another headache would be to ask for contributions to maintain that extinguisher and who would be the one in charge of the finance of it all.
!LOL Not a lot of telenovelas around these parts but with internet I could actually stream though, but also don't know where to start actually. I tried a telenovela styled tv-series with Eva Longoria in it and I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed watching Jane the Virgin, but that wasn't really a telenovela I suppose.
Oh, I used to watch the drama-series produced in India - don't know what those are called - after school, but due to scheduling conflicts I stopped.
I've heard this one mentioned in pop culture though. Is it still on? 😂
The Indian dramas were popular here for years, but slowly China's influence is also affecting what Cambodians watch on tv, and now Indian dramas have been replaced by Chinese dramas, and I must admit they aren't nearly as watchable. Apparently google tells me General Hospital is still on the air, must be at least 30+ years by now, surprising.
This reminded me of the sound and visual effects in those drama series and especially those closeups 😂.
I am sorry for the big fire that occurred there, especially housing made of wood, of course the fire will spread very quickly to all parts of the building, is the housing there far from the city center? I didn't see any fire cars coming to put out the fire, or the fire was extinguished by some local people
We are almost an hour into the mountains, and the town near us is barely a town because it has no market, and not even a proper hospital or clinic. It is a 4 to 6 hour drive in the tuk-tuk to a regional hospital with very bad care, but perhaps good enough to handle broken bones. We anxiously await the opening of the Thai border because there is a town there much closer and with better medical care, markets, etc.
Haha. Too true! Coincidentally I actually just had a conversation today with my son about the concept of "white washing."
It's good that no one was injured, at least, and that the fire didn't spread to your place.
I will never understand the obsession with white skin here, even existed before colonialism. Before colonialism, virgin girls were often made to stay inside a small hut for many weeks before marriage in attempt to lighten the skin as much as possible.
I'd love to install a community fire extinguisher somewhere, but not unless each family evenly contributes to the purchase.
Condolences for the misfortune experienced by your neighbor. I hope you and your family are always healthy
Things are okay, they have a proper house at the back of the property that they are now finishing.
Thank goodness they have a place to stay and are fine
Yay! 🤗
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Seeing that a very unfortunate incident had taken place, the mind was a little disturbed. Friend will only tell you to take care of yourself
Sad to see the loss, we really should have a communal fire extinguisher.
Yes, I've read about the hut fire disaster in one of Sreypov's posts, it's just that I forgot what the cause of the hut fire was.. 😅
It's true what you say brother, giving money to people who like to gamble, it's a wrong action. even though he just had a fire accident. because it could be that later the money will be misused by him, it will be used again for gambling..
Hope you and your family are always in good health Justin, and have a nice day.. 😊
As bad as this tragedy is, I do hope it will cause the family to get their priorities inline and spend more on the business and their childrens' futures and upbringing.
it's a shame we saw the fire that was there, hopefully those who befall the disaster will be able to face it, if it was close to me and I would help the budget as sincerely as possible but I am far away in the other country
Yes, it is tragic, but there is also a gambling problem in the village, as well as alcoholism, so any donations will have a greater chance of being gambled and lost.
Ok that wasn't so bad afterall since they already moved out. But the hard part will be the wife lost of business. The prayer place facing the burning shack does bring a lot of meaning though.
The final shot, the kid picking up unburn can drinks by the roadside, totally drew the picture of my younger self picking up expired can drinks at the canned drink factory dump.
There are some treasures to recover from the fire, seems the owner has no interest, but the local children have been busy collecting cans to recycle and things to use as as makeshift toys. I know that movie but don't remember that scene at all, very funny.
Sometimes I get worried when people place too much hope in supernatural things and forget to also physically try and struggle. That shack was at the bottom of a blind corner at the end of steep downgrade on the highway, and trucks often overheat their brakes on the descent. I was always a worried a truck would be going to fast to make the corner and crash through the guardrail, so in a way I am relieved to know the kids are not sleeping on the other side of a guardrail anymore.
If I'm not mistaken, I'll repeat it one more time. If I'm not mistaken 19 days ago @sreypov shared a story about the house fire, and there he explained the confusion that the husband of the owner of the burning house was a soldier...
But what surprised me even more when I read what you wrote, if the husband scolds his wife for not being able to put out the fire, actually if disaster strikes us, we as humans can do nothing, but a husband is very willing to scold his wife ,
A fire of that size is indeed difficult for us humans to extinguish manually, but if it is extinguished by the firefighting team, the fire will probably be resolved quickly,, we are all sorry for the incident, hopefully they are sincere about what their property has lost. devoured by the red rooster,
It was unfortunate that their is now a hatred between the wife and husband over this incident, and I still sense somehow it has not been resolved. Sometimes tragedy happens to teach us valuable life lessons, but if we learn nothing and become worse people because of tragedy, the world is heading into dark times.
It's a pity that his wife's job is to sell gasoline but you are right not to share the budget with people who fall into gambling I also agree But no one knows, if it can be noticed, some people can help with good intentions, all those in need always use a budget with their personal needs and not Gambling Because in our area gambling is very rampant Lela even the family is destroyed by it, all of us Hope the family who gets the disaster will always be given another fortune to penetrate their work and get their love back
It seems now the local casino has banned Cambodian customers, so many of the villagers have moved to other towns on the border with casinos in order to keep living the lifestyle they enjoy. Many abusive people have left the village, but many children are also without parents.
Electrical fires are a doozy. I had one in a restaurant that I was running about a decade ago and my staff went to go and throw water on it, which I stopped them from doing. That was the only time that I ever used the fire extinguisher that we had in the shop. It was on that day that I found out my staff didn't know we had a fire extinguisher, several of them didn't know what a fire extinguisher was, and most of them had no idea how to use one.
We changed that the following day.
No joke, I've never had a full-on fire, but have found plenty of melted plastic long after the fact,very scary. I imagine many people's only knowledge of fire extinguishers comes from movies, so there could be a few folks thinking they will fly across the room when they shoot it, well at least that's what I thought when I was a kid.