This is a very interesting story of how Sai took the role of an engineer to avert a great disaster in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, a small Central American country bordering the North Pacific Ocean. This appeared in the Latin American Sai Magazine in Spanish - “Sabidurai Sai”, Volume IX, Issue 1.

The night of April 18, 1998, everything was quiet and peaceful in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador. A new watchman, Felipe Flores, had just started his first shift in the electric plant, CEL, which produces electricity for San Salvador using petroleum.

Since this was the first night at work for Felipe, his supervisor had explained the strict security rules which do not allow anyone to enter the plant without written permission from the manager and they had provided him with a notebook to make notations every hour about what was happening.

At 11 PM, a fire broke out in the installations of a plastics plant which is next door to the CEL plant. The firemen that arrived at the plastics plant shouted to the workers of CEL to evacuate, since the fire could quickly spread and an explosion could occur. Only Felipe Flores remained at his station, all the other workers left.

Minutes later, there appeared inside the CEL installations a person who at first sight Felipe mistook for a fireman because of his orange robe. Immediately the fireman started to switch off all the high tension lines, throwing the switches without help from anyone. Felipe decided that this could not be a fireman, because he acted with such authority and knowledge of the installations, that this must be one of the engineers.

The engineer started to go to an interconnection of valves that control the flow of petroleum, and Felipe was running after him with his notebook in hand. He had forgotten to write down his name.

While the engineer closed the huge valves, which normally takes two persons to move, Felipe asked the engineer for his name. Over his shoulder, the engineer answered, Sathya. Felipe dutifully recorded it as ‘Satia’.

When all the valves were closed, and the engineer was leaving, Felipe remembered that he had not asked for the engineer’s last name. He ran after the engineer again and said, please give me your last name. Once again, over his shoulder, engineer Sathya said, ‘Baba’.

 

The huge fire had consumed the plastics factory, but thanks to the rapid action of engineer ‘Sathya Baba’, the electrical plant and the surrounding city had been spared from a huge explosion.

The next day in the offices of CEL, when Felipe went in to report what had happened to the manager, the manager was busy and he waited by the desk of the manager’s secretary. This secretary was a devotee of Sai Baba and she had a small photo of Swami on her desk.

Felipe saw the photo of Sai Baba on the desk of the secretary and asked,

"How is it that you have a photo of the engineer on your desk?”

The secretary explained to Felipe that this was no engineer, but it was Sathya Sai Baba who lives in India.

Felipe was not in agreement except with the name, and he showed the secretary his notebook. Below is the reproduction of the original page in Felipes notebook.

Click here to view the enlarged image

Translation of the Notebook

- John Behner
El Salvador