Only a 50% Chance of Explosion
November 20, 2022
Yesterday after James, Brian and I returned from the Saturday market we smelled gas in the house. We tried to figure out where it was coming from, it smelled strongest in the front of the house and in the basement but it mostly seemed like it was coming from outside. Our neighbor’s kids were outside and they smelled it too. They were covering their noses and said it was diesel. James turned off the gas in our house and our doorbell rang and it was another neighbor who was walking by and said the gas smell was strong and it seemed like it was coming from our house and that he was calling the fire department. We got back into our coats and hats and put Brian on his leash and went outside to wait for the fire department, and now there was a crowd gathering in front of our house. The gas smell was strongest on the sidewalk directly between our house and our neighbor’s and there was music coming from our neighbor’s house but they weren’t answering the door, which started to be a cause for concern. The music was loud and coming from the basement, someone started banging on their basement window, it suddenly felt scary. Then we saw movement in the basement and our neighbor came to the door and everyone was relieved, she and her kid were fine, they just didn’t hear the commotion over the music and they put on their coats and came outside to wait for the fire department with the rest of us, and more neighbors started to gather. The general consensus seemed to be the gas was coming from our house. The smell was wafting around, so it was hard to pinpoint where it was coming from, but our house was singled out because our landlord has notoriously failed to do any maintenance on our house, and it has fallen into disrepair.
We live in Oud Zuid (Old South) adjacent to the Vondelpark, which is the fancy part of town where the old money Dutch built their stately homes and mansions, very similar to the Upper East Side of New York City, which makes sense as New York was once named New Amsterdam and Central Park and The Vondelpark are the same concept.
Our house has been the subject of disdain with our neighbors for years. It’s a gorgeous old townhouse that we fell in love with the instant we stepped inside, it has all of its original charms, the stained glass, 15 foot ceilings, massive windows, original marble floors, exquisite tiles and a back garden oasis. The moment we walked in I had an overwhelming feeling of familiarity and comfort, like I’d known this place before, and my kid said the same thing. The housing market in Amsterdam is incredibly tight, and the summer we moved here was the year before the pandemic when real estate was sky rocketing. We were incredibly lucky this house came on the rental market. We’d quickly learned the Dutch stairs were going to be impossible for Brian (and me!) and we’d narrowed our search to a first-floor garden apartment and it seemed hopeless and then all of a sudden this house became available and it seemed too good to be true. Houses in this neighborhood are way out of our price range, but this one, while still above our budget, was in the ballpark, and it was in the same neighborhood as our kid’s school. It was perfect for us. We quickly realized the reason it was such a bargain was because of the state it was in. Our landlord hasn’t lived in this house for more than 30 years, and he’s done almost nothing to maintain it. His plan is to eventually do a total gut renovation, but it’s unclear when that will happen and in the meantime he doesn’t feel it’s prudent to spend the money to fix it. James is super handy and has mad skills so he’s been able to do things like rewire lights and fix some plumbing issues but there are ominous cracks in the walls and the wood, especially in the front of the house, is rotting and the apartment above us (also owned by our landlord and leased to students whose parents are friends with the landlord) is a total disaster. The windows are broken and held together with tape and the wooden gables, eves and overhangs are all completely rotted. “I wish he’d fix the wood” James says wistfully on an almost daily basis. It really stresses him out. Our neighbors have made their feelings about the state of our house well known. We hear their complaints at every neighborhood gathering and casual interaction. They’ve written official letters to our landlord demanding he tend to the property. They don’t blame us, they know we do the best we can and have thanked us for the improvements we’ve been able to make. But there’s only so much you can do with flower boxes. This house needs serious work. It’s more than 100 years old and no real work has been done since the 80s.
Shit talking your neighbor is a Dutch national past time, and our house provides plenty of fodder. The gas leak took it over the top.
The fire department arrived and all the neighbors pointed the finger at our house and the fire department put on their masks and went inside to check it out and knocked on all the surrounding houses to make sure everyone evacuated and put up official tape blocking off the sidewalk to our house. It was very dramatic. They did a preliminary reading and confirmed there was a gas leak somewhere and called the gas company and a guy arrived on the scene quickly and took readings and confirmed it was coming from somewhere in the vicinity of our house, though he needed to determine where, exactly, but the neighbors had already cast their verdict. It was our house, they declared, and it was our landlord’s fault. James, who had been talking to the fire department and the gas company guy, pointed out they’d determined the leak was not coming from our house, but from somewhere on the sidewalk out front, but none of them were hearing it. They stood around pointing at the broken windows and rotting wood, the indictment of our landlord clear as the rotting facade of his house.
The fire department consulted with the gas company guy and in what is probably the most Dutch thing ever, declared that there was only a 50% chance of imminent explosion, which meant it was safe enough for them to leave, and for people to return to their houses and they left and the one lone gas company guy started digging up the bricks in front of our house to find the leak. Would you like a cup of tea, I asked him. Yes, he said, with sugar please. You always offer tea or coffee, and it’s always accepted. I made his tea but it smelled too strongly of gas in the house so we put on a few more warm layers and went back outside to the square across from our house to wait while he dug.
It turned out he was digging in the wrong place, the leak was in fact coming from the spot between our house and the neighbor’s, where the smell was strongest, but the mob had been so convinced it was coming from our house he’d dug there first. Now that the source of the leak was determined some more gas company workers came and they had the cars in front of our houses towed and brought in some heavy duty digging equipment and over the next several hours they dug up the bricks and sand and replaced the leaking pipe and by 10pm all the bricks were replaced and it was like nothing ever happened.
