I was driving a 60 Oldsmobile my wifes grandfather gave her. It made a poof that sounded like a test tube when you made oxygen was hit with a match. The car burned like on TV. I was waiting for it to blow up when the firemen came and were casual as hell. The one I knew said they put out cars all the time and they do not blow up. I managed to rescue my golf clubs from the trunk.
I have no fire stories of my own to add, only this: brilliant story, melodyharmonius!
When I was a freshman in high school, I decided, for some strange reason, to take a shop class (this was out of character for me). One of our projects was to fix a lawn mower. At some point my partner and I were supposed to generate a spark between a wire and the spark plug. We successfully did this, but it turned out that gasoline had been spilled on the mower at some point, and was still coating the outside of the mower. So, it immediately burst into flames.
Naturally, everyone turned to look at the fire, and my partner helpfully shouted, “OH MY GOD, IT’S GOING TO BLOW!!!” Everyone completely freaked out and ran from the room, jumping over furniture, diving through the doorway, and so forth. The teacher calmly walked over and blasted the flaming mower with a fire extinguisher, and that was the end of it.
That reminds me of my buddy’s house after the plumber installed an outside faucet (soldered in with a torch). Right after the plumber left we were getting ready to go out to eat but paranoid me wanted to check the plumber’s work. I felt the inside wall where the plumber soldered the pipe and it was hot. I asked my buddy if he had a key hole saw and he asked me why. “Cause your house is on fire”. We cut a hole in the wall and sprayed water on the burning wood. Not be be outdone by my own paranoia I reached around the stud to the other side and grabbed a still burning chunk of wood. Ow. More cutting and more water.
my brother was dickin around with a glove covered in cologne and his favorite lighter, flames shot up his arm and and burned his arm hair. hilarious. i personally have never had anything catch fire.
funny? tragic? i dont know but that was a good story dude.
I had a tortilla catch fire once. Apparently it’s a bad idea to put something that thin into a toaster.
Yeah, I had something catch fire once: me.
I was probably 4 or 5 years old. My sister had this cool cigarette lighter—you know the old clear ones, with a couple little dice in it? I’d seen her fill it up before and monkey saw monkey did.
[Image not available: kid, not clear on the concept, is filling it with fluid while excess trickles down his arm.]
Better test it to make sure it works. WHOOSH!
They heard my screaming, got to me really fast, put out the flames. Went to the hospital, but there was no permanent damage or anything.
At 16 with a temp permit, I was treated to being able to move my sister’s POS VW beetle out of the family driveway (someone needed to get out). I backed it up a whopping three feet when the engine behind me burst into flames. I kept it moving so it wouldn’t set fire to the house and my brother got a fire extinguisher from the kitchen.
Afterward, my sister started hitting me doing the “What did you do to my car?” routine. I was trying to tell her I hadn’t done Anything when my brother raised the engine hood above the rear bumper.
“Hmmm. That shouldn’t be like that. Sis, did you disconnect this?”
“Yeah, the heater wouldn’t turn off, so I disconnected it.”
“Well, did you know that this is what cools your engine…?”
“Umm…nooooo.” :smack:
And the punching ceased.
My ex-wife accidentally turned on the wrong eye of the stove once and ignited a bread-cutting tray that was resting there. I patched the wallpaper next to the stove with a piece I cut from behind the refrigerator and applied with Elmer’s glue. Even got the full security deposit back. 
Oh, and I was present when the woods near my childhood home were set on fire.
Twice. Total damage, about half an acre each time.
Lost a nipple at a party once (it grew back, mostly).
One time, in high school, a buddy and I were trying to make hash. We heard a recipe you could save some unused parts of the bag, collect a bunch of it, then with some acetone after a couple days do something on a cooking pan with a low flame and you end up with a highly potent tar. (Read: This is a really dumb idea.) Turns out acetone’s more than slightly flammable.
Boy, kitchens sure light up quick. Flames was all over the place. And up my buddy’s arms, and over his back…
Luckily, after a couple seconds of “oh cool huh huh huh… oh, shit…” we were able to panic ourselves a firefighting effort. The kitchen was surprisingly pretty good, tho the smell of burnt paint thinner stayed for a long time. That was really our main concern, since we knew his parents would be home in a few hours :smack:. Our dude ruined his shirt, and we had to take him to a minor emergency clinic, who told us he was ‘ok tho kinda fucked’, which made sense at the time but not anymore, which meant we got to take him to the emergency room, which meant as an “emergency” I got to run my buddy’s Mustang through every red light in town.
He got put in bandage wrap with a Zoidberg-like claw for a while, but it eventually healed, more or less. He never liked marching band practice anyhow. Surprisingly, none of the docs there believed our story us scruffy teenagers were “making some chicken” and the whole house just happened to catch on fire. Go figure.
A friend of mine was driving along the highway near Cache Creek, BC, Canada and made the mistake of tossing a cigarette butt from the window.
Canada is normally know for its vast forests and frigid winters but the area around Cache Creek is very, very dry and more of a hilly grassland and can get Arizona-hot in summer.
The cigarette butt caught an air current and was deposited into a box of newspapers in the back of her pickup truck. She learned this when the flames filled her rear view mirror.
In a panic, she pulled over and desperately kicked the box out of the truck only to watch it roll into the ditch and promptly ignite the grass. Immediately, the entire ditch was on fire and a wall of flame was essentially walking up an entire hillside. She said it was like watching water run uphill.
Within minutes, the entire area was on fire and the entire town was mobilized to extinguish the fire. She was so shocked and grief stricken all she could do was sit on the side of the road and cry while she watched the local citizens fight to save their town. They saved the town but she got in a lot of trouble.
Why thank you! And kudos to you for joining SDMB on my birthday!
(couldn’t add these in time for the edit window)
**Magiver: ** smart thinking on your part. At 7, I was not so smart. Have I mentioned that I’m blonde?
Behr: yeah, I know it was tragic - but time heals all wounds. That was gulp 31 years ago, so you have to look back at the more tragic things and find the humor and the joy. For me, it’s the sheepish awe of the stream of consciousness my mind posessed. I really thought for a split second I had kick-ass powers.
Fire? Oh fuck yeah.
Until very recently, my full-time job was being a chef. In a really, really old building. With a whole bunch of lazy assholes who liked to get drunk on the job and skip the shitty things that need to be done, like “clean the stove” or “clean grease spills.”
We had a fire roughly every three weeks. Whenever one of the stove eyes would catch on fire, we would fight over who got to grab the fire extinguisher. We actually got in trouble from management because fire extinguisher costs were starting to eat into our profits. One day, the carbon filters above the grill spontaneously caught fire and the whole restaurant had to be shut down for a couple of days.
Eventually, we got these sweet extinguishers that didn’t shoot a big cloud of spray as sort of drop a big liquid ploop on the fire. Those things were the bomb; fire went OUT in about half a second of that bad boy being pulled out.
My roommate once had a pan of frying oil catch on fire while she and I were in the kitchen cooking. I was awed at how quickly and smoothly she threw a lid on that sucker. I would have run around yelling, “Yipes! Yipes!” for at least a few seconds before remembering what to do.
My own personal catch on fire story comes from when I was living in Spain. In Granada, where I lived, it got extremely cold in the winter. Everybody had these “table heaters.” They were large, open coil heaters designed to fit underneath a round table. Then everyone would sit around the table and place the heavy, blanket-like tablecloth over their legs to keep warm.
One day, I was lounging at the table with my feet stretched out when I smelled something burning. I looked under the table and, aaagh! Slippers on fire! I can’t really recall what I did at this point, but the fire basically extinguished itself when removed from the heat. My slippers were charcoal. Luckily, the soles were such thick rubber/plastic stuff that I wasn’t burned, nor did I even really feel the heat apart from the regular intense warmth from the heater.
I guess I was a naive American, believing that a household item meant for everyday use could surely not harm me. The kicker is, I later charred another pair of slippers in the exact same way.
When I was about 14 or 15 my electric blanket caught fire…While I was in bed asleep. I woke up wondering where the smell of smoke was coming from. I got out of bed went to the window to sniff (my dad was the fire captian at that time so i liked to be forewarned of an alarm. Couldn’t work it out got back into bead and turned out the light (I had fallen asleep reading so the light was on) lay for a bit rolled over and eyarrrrrrgh. The spot where the electic wires had worn through had finally set the sheets on fire. I panicked so badly I froze trying to yell out fire fire electrical fire. My parents thought I was having a nightmare so were not worried too much. eventually they checked on me and found me huddled in the corner of my bed in complete meltdown. Mum turned off the electricity smothered the flames and gave me a tongue lashing. I have not trusted an electic blanket to this day.
MRW
Yup. Many years ago, shortly after moving into our first house (it was brand-spankin’-new) I was in the basement doing carpentry; my wife had started supper, then brought down a couple of beers which we sipped while surveying my progress. Suddenly we heard a panicked cry from our then-5-year-old son that there was a fire in the kitchen. I race up the stairs; the child was plastered against a wall staring in terror at the kitchen, the glow of flames reflected on his face. As I turned into kitchen I saw a column of fire shooting up from the stove. I grabbed the first metal thing I could find – it was an old cookie sheet – and clapped it over the blazing saucepan, grabbed the pan handle and tossed the whole mess out into the back yard. Burning butter splashed about on my newly sodded lawn, but quickly went out.
Back in the kitchen, things were not going so well. The flames had burned through the hood filter, igniting the charcoal inside and the plastic blades on the whirring range hood fan; glowing embers were being propelled out through the vent all over the kitchen floor. I reached my hand (still gloved, fortunately) up into the range hood and pulled everything down onto the stovetop, grabbed the spray nozzle from the kitchen sink and started spraying. My wife called the fire department.
An hour later, after the local firefighters had determined that there was no more danger, we closed up the house and went out for pizza. It cost us a little over $2,000 to repair the damage.
Although I had an electric blanket as a kid, and it never caught fire, I’ll not have one to this day for this very reason.
An ex-girlfriend of mine had a brand on her side from an electric blanket. She was around 8 yo when it happened. Her mother threw out like 10 electric blankets the next day.