photos: wilson street explosion
For the first time last night, I realized how important 5 minutes can mean to someone's life.
Having lived most of my life in San Juan, I've passed it thousands of times...to get to school, to my mom's house, to get home.
Last night was no different. The blast occured between 12:30 and 1:00 am. Between this small window of time, I managed to pass it twice, unscathed.
The first was when I was on my home, a few minutes before the explosion occured. My feet were tired from wearing heels all day so I decided to head home first to change into more comfortable shoes before going to a nearby bar off Wilson Street for a few drinks with Dennis and friends. This took about 5 minutes. The second time I passed it was when we were on our way to the bar.
From afar, we noticed a huge cloud of smoke hovering above Wilson Street, as we got closer, we saw 2 cars that seemingly looked like they got into a bad accident. The street was covered with debris, broken glass, metal and chairs. The chairs puzzled me at first and I pointed this out to Dennis. An explosion was so far from our minds that we thought it just flew off the truck whilest on route to delivery. There were no cops, firemen, or paramedics on the scene yet and the 2 cars were blocking the entire span of the road so we had to take a long detour to get to the other side of Wilson.
Once we reached our destination, we started to hear a steady stream of sirens and it was only then that we realized it wasn't a car accident at all but an explosion.
I am writing this entry today, thankful to be unharmed and a new believer of invisible angels moving among us.
You see, the explosion happened 2 buildings down the bar (which was also damaged) of our friend that we frequent more often than the bar we decided to go to last night. Also, if me and Ana didn't take the extra five minutes to fix our stuff in the car before heading home, the timing might have been perfect for the blast to occur right when we were on our way to the other bar. Third, if I didn't decide to change shoes and pee, we also might have been caught in the disaster. These are little and seemingly innocent occurences that I believe saved us from getting harmed. So thank you God, the angels above and around us, my small bladder, sky-high heels, Hedgren and Bebe Philippines for gifting us with so much stuff last night in such big bags that we had to take the extra time to organize.
Here are some street view photos I managed to take of the extent of damage the explosion caused:
photos wilson street explosion
After speaking with the Baranggay Captain, I learned that the explosion was caused by a leak in the gas lines of Manosa Restaurant. It damaged numerous cars, hurt 7 people and shattered glass of nearby establishments, even those across the street. Thankfully, nobody was killed.
Let this be a lesson to all of us to always take the extra precautions and be responsible enough to make sure that everything is in safe working order so we can prevent unfortunate and unnecessary occurences like this to happen.
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xoxo
MrsMartinez