Where Was State Farm?

Last night one of our neighbors, a single lady from Chile, came over, complaining that: "Agua está saliendo del techo y tengo miedo de que vaya a caer."[1] I went over to check it out. Her pipes had frozen and then burst. There was water gushing out of the ceiling into the cupboards of her kitchen and from there onto the counter and then the floor. When I arrived there was already two inches of water in the kitchen and it was seeping into the living room. I called the manager and informed her of the problem.

While we waited for the contracted plumber [2] to come, María vacuumed up the water on the floor while I put buckets under the drips coming out of the cupboards. Since most of the water was running down the wall, rather than dripping, the buckets couldn't catch it. So I had to swipe the water—the frigid water—on the counter into the sink.

When the plumber arrived I translated. María can understand English pretty well but she has trouble speaking it.[3] He shut off the water, called a 'flood restorationist', and began replacing the damaged pipe. At that point we discovered that the water had leaked from the kitchen into her bedroom closet. Poor María! She and her daughter ended up having to go stay in a hotel for the next few days.

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Notes:

[1] In English: "Water is pouring out of the ceiling and I'm worried that it might collapse."

[2] I'm sure it's nice for the manager to have a cheap plumber, but I'm sure those savings evaporated with the extended damage to the apartment while we waited half an hour for him to arrive from Orem.

[3] It's been ten years since I came back from México, so I don't speak Spanish as fluidly as I used to, but I can still understand it pretty well. Thus I found it slightly ironic that I was translating.

Image attribution:

Water ripples are by Jesse Varner, available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/molas/175134104/.