anyone else almost burn their hose/ apt. down?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I , like many others, keep a box of misc. crap in my basement workroom. While doing some cleanup of the workbench, I tossed one of those little square 9volt batteries into it. In a minute or two I noticed a burning smell and found the source after a few panicked moments. The battery landed on a large wad of steel wool that I use for refinishing funiture. There was a sizable flame coming from the box which was pretty easily extinguishable, but in experimenting with it I was pretty amazed at how flammable the stuff was when put in contact with a battery.

Makes me think I should get rid of our steel wool electric blanket. :smiley:

2

Although hose-burning stories are welcome also!

3

While it wasn’t my fault or my house, I was there…

We were staying at my sister’s house. Her husband had cleaned out the fireplace in the basement earlier in the day, dumping the cold ashes into a cardboard box. Turns out all the ashes weren’t cold. About 3 in the morning, the smoke alarm went off. My husband’s Navy training kicked in - he sent the rest of us out to sit in our van, called 911, and tried to get my BIL to find his fire extinguisher.

By the time the fire dept arrived, the fire was out. BIL burned his hands throwing the burning box outside into the snow. The vertical blinds were ruined and the whole house reeked for a while. We spent the rest of that night and the next night at my parents’ house (about 10 miles away) because my sister had to leave her place open to air out.

It scared the bedoobies out of me, but I get all kinds of warm fuzzies thinking of how quickly my sweetie reacted. Glad I can count on him.

4

I won’t go into details(memories still too painful), never carry a wad of kitchen matches loose in your front jeans pocket! :eek:

5

why does it hurt when i pee?

6

my balls feel like a pair of maracas

i think i got the gonno-ca-ca-cacus

7

When I was a wee owlet (not quite 2 years old), Mom, Dad and I were living with gramma (Dad’s mom) while our new house was being built. Gramma slept in the front bedroom, and Mom, Dad and I stayed in the other bedroom (one floor house with a full basement). The house was heated by a huge coal furnace, with a huge coal bin right next to it.

I am a light sleeper and was notorious for wanting to play in the middle of the night. One night I got up and and crawled downstairs, opened the furnace (no such thing as child safety locks back then!), and started throwing chucks of coal, “just like gramma does!”. I was at this for quite awhile. They woke up when the temperature hit about 95 in the house and sparks were flying out of some of the vents.

As it were, our new house was ready a couple of months later, and had electric heat. Mom was relieved about that.

8

A friend of mine once burned my house down with the most evil toaster food ever: Pillsbury toaster strudel. I don’t know if most people are aware of the fact that a toaster strudel is more dangerous than napalm, and can actually burn for days. This thing somehow got stuck in my cicra 1950’s toaster, and next thing I knew, a foot of flame was shooting out scorching the underside of my kitchen cabinets. I snagged the (steel) toaster and threw it out in the yard, where the strudel was ejected upon impact. After putting out the fire on my cabinets, which wasn’t too severe, I returned to the back yard to notice that the damn strudel continued to burn for about 15 minutes. Interesting…

Along the nine-volt battery line- Driving back from my GF’s house in DC, I felt an interesting warm sensation while sitting in traffic. I figured it was the sun shining on my jeans, I shifted a little bit, ignored it, and continued bitching at traffic. It started getting warmer. And warmer, and eventually I realized that I was being burned alive, due to the fact that i had a (fresh) nine volt in my pocket, along with all my change. It was not very fun, I had a couple small blisters on my leg, and my girl freaked out watching me scream and throw shit out the window (the hot ass battery and some loose change). A pointless story, but fun to tell nontheless :slight_smile:

9

Dammit, “preview” is a good thing!
That should read " ALMOST burned my house down"…grrr

10

Not me, but a friend nearly did this about 3 months ago. He was “entertaining” a young lady, had lit a candle for mood, and they fell asleep. Candle fell over, fortunately they woke up. Exterior of house survived, interior was gutted. Just getting to finish of rebuild now. Remember the smoke detector!

11

1st time, summer, hot Sunday, hadn’t rained for about 4 weeks, mom, dad napping in their bedroom, I’m napping in mine (I was 15), my sister in the living room. Suddenly I hear all this commotion from my brother, I got up went into the hallway, and saw flames whipping through the window fan into my parents bedroom, shade melting etc.

Seems that Baby bro’ had decided to rid the outside of the house of cobwebs, by holding a match up to the ones beneath my parents bedroom window, wind caught the flame, which then ignited the bushes in front of the house, wackiness ensued.

It’s one of our family’s favorite archival stories- I managed to bring it up the last time I was at Karl’s house with a neighborhood get to gether :smiley:

(Our neighbor saw the flames, called the fire department and then put out the fire. Karl was too embarrased to show his face publically for weeks)

2nd time, about 2 months later, we’re sitting around the kitchen playing cards, my sister smelled smoke, seemed to be coming from Karl’s room, he’d dropped a lit fuse into his waste basket (we don’t know why) was too scared to seek help and was nearly overcome by the smoke.

He’s much better, now. :smiley:

12

Every time I try to cook

13

Every time I try to cook :eek:

14

I previously lived in unit five of an 8-unit garden apartment building. One night in my last year there, my eyes started burning and I later smelled smoke. This wasn’t all that unusual, along with the occupants of the other units I figured that someone was making ethnic food again. I called 911 when the stairwell started filling with smoke. Turned out that the people in #4 had went somewhere and forgot they left a hotplate or something on.

Angie & I once did something similar with an electric sandwidch maker. At least we got home before the smoke got too bad.

15

I have two stories, neither one of which are my fault, neither of which involve a house or apartment, but they’re good stories nevertheless.

#1) Ex-Mr. Athena and I were visiting my parents one summer. My brother had an old convertable - something like a 71 Buick Centurian - that we borrowed to take a day trip in. Ex-Mr. Athena and I were in the front seat, and our doggie was in the back. About an hour outside of town, I noticed the dog switch from one side of the back seat where she had been sleeping to the other side. About five minutes after that, I turned to pet the dog, and there were 6" flames coming from the side of the seat she was NOT on.

Turns out that my brother had the muffler replaced a week or so earlier, and they had not replaced the rusted out fire shield between the bottom of the seat and the muffler. The back seat was on fire! We stopped and poured the only liquid we had on it (beer) and eventually the flames died down. Sheesh!

#2) The same brother who owned the Buick has a crazy ex-wife. They divorced, in part, because she’s a hopeless drug addict. This story took place pre-divorce, when all of us were just finding out that crazy ex-wife, who I’ll refer to as CEW, was doing waaaaay too much cocaine.

One fine afternoon, she decided to go up to my family’s cabin to “study”. This cabin has been in the family since 1961, and we all have more or less grown up there. There’s a HUGE amount of sentimental value to it. It’s only about 10 miles from town, so people come and go quite frequently. So CEW goes to the cabin and proceeds to do a pile of coke. So much coke, in fact, that she starts to see bears walking around in front of the cabin. This was all fine and dandy until the bears decided they wanted IN the cabin. Her solution? Light several fires throughout the cabin to “keep the bears out.”

Luckily, my brother decided to head up to the cabin to check on her. When he got there, there was a fire on the back of the couch, and one on the floor directly in front of the wood stove. Why she put a fire 6" from the wood stove and not IN the wood stove is a mystery, but then again, we’re talking about hallucinated bears here. There were the remains of several other fires throughout the cabin. Brother luckily put out the fires and divorced the CEW, not that same afternoon, but you get the idea. Had he not decided to check on her, there’s no doubt in my mind that the cabin would have burnt down. No doubt CEW would have gotten out, though - she’s proven to be too nasty a bat to go down so easy.

16

Setting: My former in-laws house. About 4,000 square foot, brick, slate roof, filled with antiques, objects of art, etc. Very, very plush, old-money type house.

Participants: Me and my former brother-in-law.

Scene: In-laws are out at a party and my brother-in-law and I get extremely high. Munchies set in and Will decides to make popcorn - only he doesn’t like microwaved popcorn, he has to cook popcorn. I’m zoning out in the den and Will goes in kitchen and puts oil on stove to get hot. Telephone rings, Will comes into den to answer it and we both forget that the oil is heating up. After awhile I notice that the kitchen (down a long hall) is suddently much brighter than it should be, and that there is a orange, flickering quality to the light. In one of those made-for-TV, both look at each other with eyes of the size of saucer moments, we, in unison, screamed “FIRE!” and ran to the kitchen to find the exhaust hood fully engulfed (the grease in it had caught fire from flaming oil). Pandemonium ensued as two very stoned (but rapidly becoming less so) guys ran around trying to put the flames out, call the fire dept., hide the stash, keep from crying, etc. etc. etc.

Result: Not too much damaage at all and my mother-in-law used it as an excuse to spend in excess of $35,000 on a kitchen remodel.

I hate popcorn to this day.

17

When I was 7 I became a pyromaniac (notice I didn’t say “was”, as if my pyromania days were behind me ;)).

One night, I was experimenting with gasoline to see if it would burn!

No, not really, that’s from a Tom Green episode.

Anyway, I had just got a gross of bottle rockets sent to me by a friend and had taken many of them apart (as all boys will do) to get a big pile of black powder to burn. I had a little mortar and pestle action going on to grind up the solid chunks. I guess I hit it just right, because it caught and the whole thing blew up in my face. Besides being sans eyelashes/brows, the little pile of red paper rocket wrappers was ablaze, as well as the carpet beneath it.

Two big, round white eyes popped out of a face reminiscent of a coal miner. Wow, that stuff burns pretty good! Let’s watch it for a while. Hey, it’s burning through the carpet, cool! The carpet is melting and making cool black smoke! Righteous!

At that point my mom walked in, dropped her jaw, and threw a pile of newspapers on top of my nice blaze. I was hoping they would catch too and burn the whole house down, but they were too thick and heavy and smothered the fire. :frowning:

Needless to say, my eyebrows grew back long before I was off restriction…

18

i was about 10, and i found out that if you leave hot dogs on the stove top for too long, the water will burn away and a nice flame will start…also, i got bored at my parent’s new year’s eve party and set some napkins on fire, only to drop it on the floor. that turned out ok though, no one was the wiser.

19

Yes, I put some hose in the fireplace. It stunk.