Houston resident Asha Gilbert was doing a pole dancing workout at her home when the mishap occurred on July 6
Credit: Asha Gilbert/TikTok; Asha Gilbert via Storyful
NEED TO KNOW
- On July 6, Asha Gilbert accidentally flooded her Houston apartment during a pole dancing workout when the pole hit a fire sprinkler
- The viral TikTok video of the incident has over 12 million views and shows water gushing through her apartment
- Gilbert tells PEOPLE that she’s getting back to normalcy but found going viral difficult at first
A woman whose pole dancing practice accidentally flooded her apartment earlier this month has told PEOPLE she’s finally getting back to normalcy — even if some of the reactions online weren’t easy to deal with at first.
On July 6, Asha Gilbert was practicing a pole dance workout in her living room when the pole dislodged and hit a fire sprinkler, causing it to burst and flood her apartment, as seen in a viral video she posted on TikTok.
In the shocking clip — which has gained over 12 million views — Gilbert jumps up and spins around the pole, causing it to dislodge and knock the sprinkler. Bursts of water quickly gush through the apartment as Gilbert darts out of the way, along with her dog. Both Gilbert and her dog were safely evacuated.
Credit: Asha Gilbert/TikTok
Nearly two weeks later, Gilbert has told PEOPLE that she’s settling back into everyday life.
“I’m getting back to a sense of normalcy,” she said. “I started back in the gym this week, which was great. My anxiety has lessened a lot, and I’m starting to feel back to normal, for sure.”
@ashachinara
A stripper pole… accidentally hit my apartment sprinkler… and flooded my apartment. 😭💦
♬ original sound – Asha C. Gilbert
She shared in a TikTok video on July 10 — in which her apartment could be seen completely flooded room to room — that she was moving “due to the damages,” and that she “apologized to everybody” following the incident.
Gilbert confirmed to PEOPLE that she moved that same day. “Thanks to my sober community and my dog park community, I was able to get into my place and unpack pretty quickly,” she explained.
While the incident itself forced her to move, Gilbert said the experience of going viral unexpectedly has been the most difficult part to process.
She explained to PEOPLE that she’d only recently returned to social media after a lengthy break when the video blew up.
“I had an Instagram for two weeks,” she said. “I had just decided to get back on social media after years of a hiatus, just for my mental health. So to come back and be like, ‘Hey, I’m going to create content,’ and then have this crazy incident happen, and then deciding to post it, and then it just growing bigger than I could ever have imagined — words cannot even explain the feeling of that.”
She admitted that she wasn’t prepared to handle the negativity that can so often come with social media virality, sharing that she “wasn’t handling it well” at first.
“If I’m being honest, I cried every day looking at comments,” she told PEOPLE, urging people to remember that their “words can hurt people,” and that sometimes saying nothing can be a good option.
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Gilbert wanted to clear up a couple of misconceptions, too. First, that pole dancing is her career, and second, that it is inherently sexual.
“This was something I was doing in the comfort of my home,” she told PEOPLE. “I was appropriately dressed for a workout.”
“It bothered me a bit – but there’s nothing wrong with being a pole dancer, right? It’s one of the toughest workouts you can do, and it’s overly sexualized, in my opinion.”
Gilbert hails her support group in Houston for helping her gain a new perspective on the situation. “They advised me, ‘Hey, don’t look at these comments. These people don’t know you — no matter what you do, people are going to have something to say,’ ” she explained.
She said she began focusing on the positive comments — which were in the majority — rather than the negatives.
People reached out both to thank her for making them laugh more than they’ve laughed in years and to tell her they’re now moving their own pole somewhere safer because they didn’t know it could cause that sort of damage.
But will Gilbert get back on the pole herself? The jury’s still out on doing it at home, she admitted, but she said she might be open to giving it a try somewhere else.
“I love the art of movement,” she told PEOPLE. “I’m definitely open to doing pole dancing in a studio and learning more about the art, because it’s so beautiful to me.”
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