Every had anything catch on fire?

In My Humble Opinion
21

A few years ago I was in a Turkish restaurant in Singapore. When we sat down I didn’t really notice that they had candles on the table (the flame was well down inside a glass cup of sorts).

So I was reading a newspaper and was obviously into the article on the right-hand page… so much so that I failed to notice the left-hand page was now on fire. The waiter and my wife managed to put it out on the floor before I really knew what happened. As I looked up, about 200 other customers were glaring suspiciously at me.

Then he took our candle away. :smiley:

22

Nomad, that reminds me… we met four Brits on the Inca Trail, erally good guys, and continued trekking with them for a coupe of days. One was telling us of his university interviews for (I think) Oxford. He said he went to the appointment, and a rather stodgy older gentleman looked up from his newspaper, said “Impress me” and then went back to reading his paper. Phil sat there for a second thinking of what to say, couldn’t come up with anything and so he reached over with his lighter and set the administrator’s paper on fire.

Yes, he got in.

23

Years ago, I took a lady friend to a fairly new restaurant. She moved the candle on the table, and it shattered, burning her with hot wax. The restaurant staff sprung into action, to make sure that…

…we wouldn’t sue. They rendered no medical help at all, not even a glass of water.

At least when we went back the next day to complain to the owner, he gave us a voucher for a free meal any time we wanted it. Oh hell yeah we got drinks, appetizers, and dessert.

24

I haven’t done anything more exciting than igniting oven mitts or bagels — but a year ago last spring, lightning struck the condo complex where my brother lived and the entire place was lost. It didn’t burn to the ground per se, but none of the residents were allowed to return and sift through the rubble. The entire thing was bulldozed two days later. He salvaged a yarn ornament that was outside on his patio.

It’s amazing to realize someone you love has NOTHING. He had, literally, only the clothes on his back and his cell phone. He was eating dinner in a restaurant when the fire happened; his step-son, in fact, called him and told him to turn on the news: his house was on fire. The late-spring storm came on the heels of an unprecedented warm spell; after the storm, it turned bitter cold. The clothes on his back were shorts and a T-shirt. The next day, he headed off to Target for something to wear. Quote from him at the time: “I’ve become an instant minimalist.” His children’s backbacks also went up, along with all the clothes they had stored at his house (they had more at their mom’s).

Fortunately, I had a lot of stuff I could give him after recently combining households with my new husband. I also bought a lot of stuff at a neighborhood yard sale — and then the neighbors GAVE me what they didn’t sell that they thought he maybe could use. A trip to a restaurant supply store also yielded a set of heavy plates for $1 each.

Once my scrounge gene was activated, it was hard to turn it off! I still catch myself looking around for stuff he could use! (even though he’s back on his feet again).

25

Back in the days when I used to eat hot dogs and hate my family, I was home alone cooking my Thanksgiving dinner – a hot dog – in a toaster oven. I liked my hot dogs well done, so I put the toaster-oven shelf up on the highest notch. I wasn’t upset when smoke started coming out of the toaster oven, because when I say well done I mean well done, but when the tongues of flame started licking out, I had to yank out the shelf and toss the flaming hot dog into the sink. That was a little too well done.

When I was about seven years old, my siblings and I and our little friends were a bunch of pyromaniacs. We used to pick cattails and let them dry in the rafters of our abandoned brooder house, then we’d light them on fire and pretend to be smoking cigars, or use them to burn holes in leaves, or just watch them burn, because we were pyromaniacs. So one day I’m strolling from the sandbox past the brooder house, and I see billows of grey smoke pouring out from under the eaves of the brooder house. Being a little genius, I just thought, “Oh, someone’s burning a few cattails in there,” and kept on calmly walking. I got up to the house and happened to glance back. By then huge flames were shooting out from under the eaves. My father was there, but hadn’t noticed. I said, “Look, Papa, look!” He ran over and put out the fire with a garden hose. The brooder house wasn’t destroyed, just charcoal-broiled on the inside. I really don’t think the cattails were to blame; I think one of the neighborhood kids just took the pyromania a little further than the rest of us.

26

My hair.

Years ago in days gone by, I had really lovely long curly hair. I was walking and trying to light a cigarette at the same time and a breeze blew a strand into my lighter. It wasn’t quite a Michael Jackson moment, but it was enough that I started patting my hair and face frantically - much to the amusement of my friends.

27

A few years ago, we were making tacos for dinner. We usually make the taco shells by frying corn tortillas. After dinner, I took Whatsit Jr. out for a walk and MrWhatsit stayed behind to do some laundry and whatnot.

When I got back to our apartment after the walk, MrWhatsit was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. He said, “The first thing I want you to know is that all our stuff is okay!”

This is not what you want to hear.

It turns out that he had decided he wanted one more taco, so he turned the heat back on under the oil. Then he went to go do laundry, and didn’t remember the hot oil until the smoke detector started going off. In the kitchen, he found 2-foot flames leaping out of the pot. Luckily MrWhatsit thinks fast on his feet, and immediately stifled the flames with the pot lid, but it wasn’t quick enough to stop a thick black ring of smoke residue from forming around the entire perimeter of our apartment ceiling.

I of course took a picture to memorialize the event for posterity.

28

Oh, and I had to beat my pants out once when I told a real whopper.

29

Just like every student’s dream, my small town high school burned down my senior year. I mean, flames went up hundreds of feet high and lit up the sky for miles all around. I was sleeping and my mother woke me up and told me to look out of the window to figure out what was going on.

The first Gulf War was about to start and we thought that something had gone horribly wrong. We threw on some clothes and jumped in the car to find the fire. We found people sitting a 1/4 mile away sobbing (you couldn’t get closer than that because it was too hot by that point). We stayed there all night with everyone.

The remains smoldered for over a month. They built an emergency school in the gym but we didn’t have any books or at least matching ones so the teachers just let us play outside and on the football field for the rest of the year. They just made up grades based on what we had before. The cause turned out to be a gang initation stunt caused by lighting the curtains in the main auditorium.

30

I was in the checkout line at Office Depot and a really bad smell was coming through the door. Wonder what’s making that nasty burned plastic odor, I said to the clerk. Then I went outside to find that my Bronco II was on fire. For no known reason. It was a fairly new truck, in very good shape, but…it was toast. Nasty smelling toast.

31

I was lke your son, except the bulb caught a rolled up foam mattress on fire and burned a significant amount of the house. I had been home from college for the summer - Dad put me on a bus back to college, with a check in hand to buy some new clothes, not long after :).

In retrospect, it was probably pretty funny watching me try to put the fire out from outdoors (it was coming out the windows at that point), only to realize I was trying to use a soaker hose.:smack:

32

My family’s house burned down (partly) after a lightning strike.

I was sixteenish, it was about 11 at night during a severe storm, and my whole family was gathered around the TV, waiting for tornadoes. Once the worst was over and the storm had weakened to slightly above average, we all ended up on the back porch, watching storm clouds, as was our habit.

Then, a deafening bang–the loudest noise I’ve ever heard or felt–and shingles and splinters of siding appeared on our lawn. Must be a lightning strike. Dad ran out into the rain to look at the damage (at this point, we were amazed and agog) and yep, the house is burning. Good thing we weren’t still holed up in the basement.

Ours was not a clean burn. One bedroom and the entire roof of the second story were destroyed, but everything else down to the basement was badly water-damaged. This meant we didn’t get to be obligate minimalists–with the overly zealous help of all the grandmas, etc, we instead had to sort through mountains of wet, moldy, and smoke-scented, but perfectly good-- crap. I’d rather have hired a bulldozer.

So that’s my experience. The bizarre part is that it wasn’t the first lightning strike we had that summer. It was the third. In spring, we were in church during a particularly epic storm (Highlights: "*The body of christ-*BOOM…*The blood of christ-*RUMBLE), and lightning blew out the lights and the pipe organ. Then, just two weeks before the fire, a milder lightning strike took care of our phone lines and internet. I guess we should have put up lightning rods then…

33

Good reminder to add another extinguisher to my upstairs.

Some kids set a recliner on fire in the alley years ago. Didn’t know it until I hit the garage door opener and it was surreal to see a flaming piece of furniture greet me. I keep an extinguisher in the car and despite a rather robust fire was able to put it out quickly. Also chased a truck down once who was dragging his brakes. When he stopped I handed him the extinguisher. Your truck, your fire. I wasn’t too keen on molten tires hitting me if they exploded.

34

When I was 7, my family lived in a quiet bedroom community in New England. I had spent the day playing at the neighbor’s house, and my parents and 3 older brothers had been to a sports tournament and were therefore pretty wiped out. Dad grilled burgers and dogs for dinner and then he and my mom turned in for the night, leaving my oldest brother in charge (he was 13 at the time).

Bro got permission to make s’mores on the grill, so he and I went out to “stir up the coals” with a stick. He left me with strict instructions to stir while he went back inside to get the marshmallows et al. I stirred with all my 7-year old vigor – and actually knocked a bricket out of the grill and on to the ground.

Without thinking, I immediately bent down and picked it up and threw it back in to the fire. Then it dawned on my tiny brain how that should have burned my hand, and yet I didn’t feel a thing.

I must have super powers! I must be like those people in National Geographic that can walk on beds of hot coals and not get burned!!

So excited about my newly discovered ability, I went back to vigorously stirring the coals and what do you know? I “accidentally” knocked ANOTHER bricket out of the grill. Only, this time I had a live coal and when I reached down to pick it up, it burned. Oh, how it burned.

Dismayed to have lost my new-found abilities so quickly, I determined to try again. But again, the gods were displeased and my hand could not withstand the heat of the coal long enough to return it with the others in the grill.

I knew why they were displeased. I had tried to use my National Geographic inspired super powers for my own personal pleasure, rather than because of necessity. So ashamed was I and intent on hiding my sin, that I rolled the hot coal to this hole in the ground that I remembered. It was conveniently located at the corner of the garage and the breezeway leading in to the house.

My brother returned outside and noticed how quiet I was and commented. I confessed what I had done, and he immediately went to the hole and looked down inside. He could see the coal glowing and ran to get the hose. He soaked the hole, but no matter how much water he dumped down, there still seemed to be a glow. He finally shrugged his shoulders and we went back to what we were doing.

Before going to bed, my brother did think to tell my dad, who in a half-awake stupor also doused the hole with water, kinda. He was so tired, I’m not sure his aim was that good.

Later that night, my parents got a call from our neighbor.

“Are you burning leaves?” she asked.
“At 10 o’clock? No, we are not,” said Dad.
“Well, then, your house is on fire.”

We all were able to evacuate safely and my parents were able to go back inside and save some items and grab purses and move the cars. But the 7-alarm fire burned down our entire garage (well it exploded from the lawn mower), the breezeway, and half of the house.

The firemen were great and moved as much stuff as they could from one side of the house to the other as they were battling the blaze. My bed and my brothers beds were covered with clothes and knick knacks they tried to save for us. It was the largest fire in the history of the town, and everyone was extremely generous, donating clothing and food and giving my mom a huge kitchen shower when we finally were done rebuilding.

We later found out that the original builders had never removed the wooden forms after pouring the concrete for our garage. The hole I had rolled the bricket in to had rested on a piece of this wooden form and burned sideways – so no matter how much water we poured down – it wasn’t spreading sideways the way it would have needed to.

I tried to confess to the Fire Chief when he came to interview my parents. But my mother was worried that I would get locked up in juvenile for being a pyromaniac or something, so she shushed me and wouldn’t let me tell. Until now . . .

35

I’ve had 2 fires, one semi-intentional, the other was shit happens.

When we moved in to the present place, I bought a set of derelict barns and animal pens, and the area was extremely overgrown with weeds. I set out on a cool and calm Sunday morning to try to burn off some of the weeds. A very small splash of gas and a match, and I was in business.

What I didn’t know, because the weeds were so thick, was underneath was a pile of lumber I could not see, and at the same time, the wind picked up. Ten minutes later, I had a raging conflagration that got into the pig pen and derelict barn, and I had broken my shovel trying to contain the brush fire.

The fire department was called, and had it all out in a few minutes. The kicker was I had previously arranged to go to their meeting the next day to join. :smack: I still catch hell on occasion about that.

The other event was the day the icemaker in my fridge/freezer had an electrical fire, destroying all the food inside the freezer part and smoking up the kitchen. The fire was out as soon as I yanked the plug. I called my chief to come look it over and make a report for insurance purposes.

He happened to have an old fridge he wasn’t using, so 2 hours later I had a working fridge to tide me over until the insurance company settled up. We still have that fridge, out in the garage. Best $40 I ever spent.

36

We bought our first house a few years ago. One of the first things we did to fix it up was tear out the carpet and refinish the wood floors.

I was at the point where the floors were sanded (I did see the warning to the effect that sawdust may combust, but did not take it seriously) and I was going to work on staining over the weekend.

Since staining often results in a lot of fumes, my wife and son decided to stay overnight at the grandparents.

During the night, I woke up when I heard a paint can fall down the steps. I came out of the bedroom to find the hallway in an orange glow. Around the corner I found a mini blaze starting to climb up the wall.

Luckly, the bathroom was right there and there were plenty of buckets to fill and throw water on the fire. I put the fire out pretty quickly, but my heart seemed like it was going to jump out of my chest.

I called up my wife and told her that I had a little problem. She came home to find minimal water and major smoke residue on the second and third floors.

Moral of the story, always dispose of massive amounts of sawdust properly. Do heed the warnings when they tell you that sawdust has the potential to combust. And DON’T throw away staining rags, cans etc. in the same bag as this potentially explosive sawdust.

I was VERY lucky.

37

Two months before I turned 5, the apartment building my parents and 3-year-old brother and I were living in had a significant fire. All that survived from our apartment was the contents of one closet (which luckily held some old photo albums, so we still have my brother’s and my baby pictures). Our cat might have died in the fire, but I like to think she got out and ran away. I still have a memory of being outside the building and watching the flames and the firefighters. And I still have the teddy bear that some Red Cross volunteer gave me at the scene.

The cause was an upstairs neighbor who fell asleep while smoking in bed.

The fire made the papers, and I got taken to the hospital for being in shock: I shared the ambulance ride with a fireman who had fallen through the roof of the building, which is why I’ve always had a soft spot for firefighters. I have no idea how my parents started over again, 200 miles from their families and with two little kids, but they did. I grew up with the story of the fire, but when I was finally old enough to understand the magnitude of what they went through – when I was older than they were at the time of the fire – it made me respect them just a little bit more.

I used to go around and around with my college roommate about this: she liked to fall asleep with candles burning, but I was too paranoid to let her – and I couldn’t fall asleep, myself, with anything burning in the room. She knew about my family’s fire and understood the cause of my paranoia, so she usually complied, but every now and then she’d forget or get annoyed when I snuffed her candles before going to bed.

38

Two Plymouth Furys, both did the same thing, backfired so hard they broke the carb.
Plymouth Duster, someone stole the gas tank, and left their cigarette behind.
Old Chevy station wagon, don’t work on a car while drunk.
Fire department was called when the propane tank in the yard shed blew the safty valve, no fire, but a hell of a near miss.
Old tree stump, I still think it ignited spontaniously, old rotten punky wood.
My old friend, Propane grill, tried to light it with the lid down. He retrieved the lid and his hat from the porch roof. Had to regrow his eyebrows.
My MIL told me of 7 yo daughter who put frozen pizza in the oven, then went to watch cartoons. They had to remodel the kitchen.
Right now I have around 10 abc fire extinguishers in the house. I don’t keep one in the car anymore because the kids keep playing with them. The smoke alarms I bought when we moved into this house have all died and need to be replaced, I think this little thread here is a reminder to me. Thanks.
[running off to find 3 new smoke alarms]

39

Years ago when I still lived in Indiana, a local comedy club decided to show the Rocky Horror Picture Show. They thought it would be nice to have lighted candles on all the tables. It was nice. Untill we got to the “Great Scott!” part of the movie. Yep, flaming toilet paper everywhere. Good thing we had those water guns! :smiley:

40

My hair once, backed up to a kitchen pass-through with decorative Christmas candles. Right after Mom dropped $ on me at the hair salon, naturally.

Something in the kitchen that I don’t remember, but the extinguisher worked wonderfully. Except for leaving residue on the electric burner that I swear sandblasting wouldn’t remove.