One Fiery Afternoon
Sun, sun,
sun, here it comes…
It was around four in the afternoon the other day, 29th of April, 2024, and the temperature around 37 degrees Celcius when the electric cables in front of our house suddenly burst into a terrifyingly huge flame, and for a few moments, I thought the flame (just a few feet away from our windows) would grow bigger and crawl into our house. I grabbed my phone and our dog just in case it’d happen. I was home alone. Luckily, a fire truck (on its way to a different fiery emergency) was rushing on our street as the flame raged on, and alert residents quickly stopped them—and the firemen saved the day.
It’s a normal occurrence these days with this kind of heat, the firemen told us, electric wires suddenly bursting into flames, especially if they are loaded with illegal connections, and we all know how houses with illegal connections abuse the use of electricity—because electricity is free, they put air-conditioning unit even inside their bathroom.
And speaking of heat, this dry season is probably the hottest we Filipinos have experienced and rest assured that every year, it would just get hotter. Yep, climate change. In fact, PAGASA just announced that the month of May would even be hotter than April. Then, there’s this article I read where a supercomputer predicted that this planet would be really hot and totally uninhabitable 250 million years from now. Okay, I don’t think that’s a cause for worry. 250 million years. Even vampires don’t live that long.
But still, I’m beginning to believe now—as I watch a drop of sweat from my nose slowly fall into the space bar of my laptop computer and make a splashing sound—that heat from extreme temperatures, not a nuclear war, would wipe out humans from the face of the earth.
And it will happen earlier than 250 million years from now.
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