Bam!

Night before last, about 1:00 in the morning, esposo and I were awoken by a blast that, I swear, seemed like a bomb being dropped nearby. The whole area lit up with white light and the explosion made the house shake. We both jumped out of bed, going, "What was that?!" But then nothing else happened, our son was soundly asleep, so we figured it was just some idiots shooting off fireworks too close, and went back to sleep.

Then, about an hour after that, we woke up to what sounded like a cherry bomb going off near our house. Again, we go through the "What was that!?" routine, figure it's nothing, and go back to sleep.

Around 3:00, we hear a zapping sound that is similar to what passed for science and technology in old black-and-white sci-fi movies. Or a bug zapper that was maybe a 5-foot-square box. Anyway, it was loud. And scary. We look out the window to see that, lo and behold, all that noise previously had been coming from a blown transformer on the electrical box across the street from our house. We know this now, because it's on fire.

Personally, I'd never seen an electrical pole on fire. Luckily down here in Costa Rica, cement is the material of choice for electrical poles, otherwise that thing would've lit up like a Halloween Christmas tree. As it was, wires were dropping from the box and remained on fire on the ground, while at the box, the fire was tearing up the connecting lines. (Strangely, though, we didn't have any loss of electricity.)

We called 911, and as esposo is explaining to the person on the other end that the electrical box is on fire, he (the operator) asks, "Is anything burning?" [slaps forehead] Even so, the fire department managed to get there within two minutes, although they did stop down the street first (clue: look for the electrical box on fire). [slaps forehead again] I was a little concerned that the whole thing might blow up; even so, esposo managed to take a photo of the whole affair before the fire department arrived:


Did you know electrical boxes had those light-up-in-the-dark code numbers on them? I never did, until I saw this picture.

Well, that was fun.