House Fire 2018

Our House Fire

Stu Cassell

September 1, 2018

We had a fire in our house last night, and if it weren't for a specific chain of events we might have lost everything we own including the house. If I didn't believe in guardian angels before, I certainly do now.

It all began with MR's car. She couldn't start it when she was ready to leave for her first appointment with a new therapist. I told her to take my car and I retrieved a power pack from my car that is designed for use when you need to jump start your car in such cases as dead batteries. I knew I hadn't charged it in a long time so I took it down to my office and plugged it into the closest available outlet, my backup battery for my computer. It had several free outlets.

"Lucky" or something else? For some reason after being plugged in for an hour I decided to move the power pack to another outlet in the room, one near my tool bench which is against the back wall of my office. This was both a good thing and a bad thing as you will see.

I've charged that power pack twice before and never had a problem with it. I left it plugged in and forgot about it the rest of the day.

I called AAA and they came and installed a new car battery in MR's car so I didn't need the jump I was planning on doing before deciding to call for road service.

In the evening after supper my cousin Karen's husband Joel Gold called. He wanted to know if I had a copy of Windows 7 he could borrow? I told him I would check and call him right back. I went down to the basement to our box of software and looked through it and did find a copy of Windows 7. I called Joel back and told him and asked him if he wanted me to come by and drop it off last night? I offered to do that because he had been kind enough to lend me his ice water cooling system and deliver it when I had my knee surgery. I wanted to return the favor.

"Lucky" or something else? As it turned out, Joel's sister was in town and she and his niece were coming over so Joel said he'd come by to get it in the next day or two. Had his sister not been visiting and coming for dinner I presume, MR and I would have gone over there - we hadn't seen Karen and Joel for months and were going to go together to drop off the computer disk.

So we stayed home instead and about a half hour after that we were watching television in the living room and heard an explosion which we assumed was outside somewhere. I thought it might be a transformer or someone in the neighborhood either lighting a cherry bomb or even firing a gun. Within a minute or two MR heard our smoke detector go off but because the basement door was closed we didn't immediately know where it was coming from. I walked towards the basement and opened the door and realized something really bad was happening down there.

I ran down the stairs and slipped on the floor which was already covered with soot from what I learned seconds later was a fire going on in my office.

The power pack had exploded and it was sitting on the tool bench right next to a roll of paper towels. When I reached my office the fire was already 3 feet high and 3 feet wide.

I yelled up to MR to get some water and I ran to the other side of the basement where a bucket was and put it under the sink and started filling it.

MR remembered we had a small can of fire extinguisher in the kitchen and found it and gave it to me. Fortunately, I got to the fire in time to put it out with the fire extinguisher. By then the basement was filled with smoke.

I saw that I had completely forgotten about the running water in the sink and by now it was overflowing, but fortunately, it just drained and didn't over flow on the floor. I turned it off and decided to open the basement windows. That was a small project in itself. Each window except one had a cross bar the previous owner had installed to prevent anyone from breaking into the basement.

In addition, I had used silicon to keep the storm windows on the outside of each of the 4 windows. I ran outside and removed the one that was over the only window that didn't have a cross bar. Then I returned and started taking the cross bars off. Each of the was attached with a hex shaped screw and two of them didn't have slots for a screw driver.

I decided to use a socket wrench and my sockets were in the area of the fire. I was able to open the partially melted case but the sockets were so hot I had to use a towel to get them out. I spent several minutes locating the right size for the first window. After I got the first cross bar off I opened the window but they only open a few inches.

MR went outside meanwhile and removed the other storm windows. I had to try several sockets before I was able to remove the rest of the screws because they were different sizes. We finally got all of the windows open and set up some fans to direct the smoke towards them. We turned on the fan on the ac to stay on and then opened windows upstairs and had a fan pointed towards the garage and the kitchen door open as well. The dogs were scared and went outside and stayed there until we were finished.
The whole house smells like burnt plastic. I'll be calling our insurance company Monday morning to see what might be covered.

Had we gone to Karen and Joel's house last night it would have been before the explosion and I have no doubt that our house would have burnt down before a neighbor realized what was happening and called the fire department.

I am just thankful that no one was hurt, and that between the two of us, MR and I were able to deal with it quickly and efficiently so it wasn't worse. What remains to be seen is what if any damage it did to my brand new computer. Everything in my office has plastic soot on it. I'm typing this from MR's computer upstairs.

Here are more pictures I took the morning after the fire.