Fire at the Dive Shop

Things have been a wee bit nuts here over the past week to say the least. In the early morning hours last Wednesday, the dive shop burned to the ground. It shared a building with the hotel pizzeria restaurant and apparently something in the kitchen caught fire in the middle of the night, spread to the Underwater Centre and it went up in flames. When we walked up to work around 8am on Wednesday, there was a fire truck outside and they were hammering plywood up into place around the buildings to prevent anyone from going inside. All we could see were the tops of the burn timbers and what used to be the roof, but was now a black messy hole.  Most everything in the dive shop was destroyed – all the equipment, tanks, paperwork, and tools collected over the years, everything is gone. Thankfully there were no injuries as since it happened in the middle of the night when no one was around. A few random things survived – various tank bangers made of stainless steel, a few random pieces of equipment that happened to be tucked away in the right spot, and some of the big metal shelves are warped, but usable  I don’t have any photos, as it just didn't feel right to go around snapped pics of the devastation, but it is pretty bad. The roof is gone, 3 of 4 walls are gone, the entire interior that used to be 3 rooms is one big burned mess, most of the tanks are half or completely melted – it was literally a hot mess and still steaming during the day on Wednesday. We spent Wednesday talking to clients who had booked dives for that day, telling them about the fire and that the plan was to have dives up and running by Friday, since the boats were fine as they are stored in the water, away from the shop. However, by Thursday the owner had managed to set up a new temporary shop on the other side of the hotel, brought in new gear from storage and from other dive shops and had dives going out a mere 24 hours after the fire.  She seriously might be the most resilient woman I’ve ever met.  She could beat any film production crew’s ability to get an incredible amount of work done in a very short time and with very limited resources. By Friday, the boats were full again and we were back to diving 3 times a day, as usual.  One of the positive things to come out of this is seeing how everyone at the shop has come together to rebuild  – sharing their gear, working extra days, laughing and continuing to dive and have a great time with the clients and each other in the aftermath of the fire, especially since the  Seychellois instructors, divemasters and skippers lost most of their own personal gear in the fire as well.  I felt fortunate to be working at the shop and doing my divemaster with these guys before the fire, and now I appreciate them even more.  Each day, the owner brings in more gear for everyone to use until they can get proper replacements. As for me, I had limited gear of my own, so I didn’t lose much – only my wetsuit, mask, fins and a few small random items – things that are totally replaceable. There are plans to have the dive shop rebuilt in the next few weeks so it should be back to business as usual soon with new and improved facilities. In the meantime, we are still working and diving most every day, with the only limitations on diving being based on the number of tanks available and proper gear to outfit everyone.  The temporary shop looks as good as any other dive shop – if you’d never seen the Underwater Centre before the fire, you’d never know that this is only the temporary shop.  On top of the fire, the internet was down last week as well, so that is another reason I’ve been a bit out of touch (or totally silent and completely unreachable). Apparently a ship dropped its anchor on the fiber optic cable that connects us with the rest of the world, but obviously that too has been fixed and I’m back to being kind of reachable and online every few days (hopefully).

 That is pretty much all I have to report at the moment  - everyone is safe, the dive shop is getting rebuilt and I am still diving almost every day. Oh, and I still get to see this every night from my flat...

and sometimes I even get to wake up to this....

Tough life.