I had a fire page at 0330 this morning. The call was for a smell of smoke in a residence.
When we rolled out of the station, the verbal instructions from the dispatcher directed us to the far end of a 3 mile long road, in a neighboring district. My truck came from the other end of the road, and we happened to roll right on by the residence because we weren’t looking for it yet. The phone call from the resident to the dispatcher must have been a doozy, because I laughed out loud when she came on the radio and said we drove past. The real location was in my district, BTW.
We turned around and became first on the scene; I went in to check everything out. The problem was in the back room of a small single-wide trailer. The lady pointed to a combination outlet and switch that had a streak of smoke going up the wall. I took it apart, and saw aluminum wiring that had melted from an overload, and the hot wires would arc in a rather spectacular fashion. She was lucky that this was contained in a box, because unboxed connections (common in Bubba-esque DIY projects) would have set the wall on fire.
That trailer would have gone to the frame in a couple of minutes, too. Y’all have heard of the crazy cat ladies? Our resident of the moment was her first cousin, the crazy kitsch lady. EVERY available square millimeter of horizontal surface was covered by a figurine or plushy, and there were so many plaques, pictures, or mirrors on the walls that you could not tell what color of paint or wallpaper was underneath. Mind you, the place was also clean. I bet she dusted constantly to keep up with it all.
There were other problems, too. The hallway to the back was built to be about 2 feet wide; just enough that I could walk down it facing forward and my shoulders just barely brushing the walls, if it was clear. That old loon had an on-end mattress and a bookcase with still more figurines in the wasy, and I had to walk it sideways. :rolleyes: Not an easy way to get out if there are roaring flames coming at you.
To end this, we killed all of the power to the trailer because of the shape of the wiring, and uncertainty over what breaker controlled that circuit. CKL went to spend the rest of the night with her daughter, and the landlord is on the hook to fix the electrical problems.
The kicker: much to VWife’s delight, I left my radio on scene, so I’m out of the emergency business until I get it back tonight.
Morals to this story:
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Wherever you live, make sure your house number is extremely prominent. If you’re rural, $15 will get you a reflective address plate for the mailbox.
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Aluminum wiring sucks, and is a fire waiting to happen. There’s a reason it is no longer code compliant. If you’ve got it, get it replaced.
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Even if it’s clean and orderly arranged, should you not be able to do a 360[sup]o[/sup] spin without knocking over a dozen Beany Babies, you have too much shit. It’s time to thin the herd.
Yeah, so I got a little bit carried away when I was ordering groceries. Other things that I have too much of are ketchup and chocolate syrup. Not really a winning combination.
