A more serious post today. This morning at 1:30am Liz and I were awakened by our smoke detector. When I opened the bedroom door the hallway was full of smoke. It was a harsh, acrid smell. We got the doors/windows open and the dogs outside. There was no obvious fire and I went through the house looking for a source. I checked the attic, basement, roof, crawl spaces, rooms, nothing. I was about to call the fire department when Liz called to me. On the floor was a small rag that had a little bit of the excess oil from finishing the floor of our front porch ( we have been doing an ever increasing renovation on our house) that was smoldering. It had melted the broom next to it, burned through the Ram board protecting our floors, and had started to burn into the hardwood floor beneath. I had always heard of spontaneous combustion (insert Spinal Tap reference lol) but had never seen it happen. The oil in the rag had started a fire that could have burned the house down, and us with it. We are Very Very Very lucky that we were alerted by our smoke detector long before the smoke reached our bedroom. I know we all hear it all the time, but Please, Please check your smoke detectors regularly. Im certain this one saved our lives and our home this morning.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 22:03:51 +0000