Monday, February 12, 2007

How long does it take a coal to burn through?

We last time our woodstove was filled was around Friday 6pm, Gerald emptied the ashes around 4pm Sunday and restocked the woodstove for the last time of the evening around 6pm Sunday. The ash he dumped into a plastic bucket which he left in the house. At 1:40 the fire alarms went off! I wake up turn on the light - yell something I would have preferred to use as the title of this blog entry (but Gerald vetoed it with this) and grabbed Jared (fortunately he was asleep in his carseat..he's been a little tough to get to go to sleep lately) the fire extinguisher and handed that to Gerald and then went to Cailyn's room. Gerald yelled at me to open the door (I hate it when he does this - the last time it was because there was a bat attached to the shirt he was wearing!) and he ran out with a smoldering bucket (which started flaming a bit on his way upstairs)......and in a short period of time after burst into flames on our porch. Oh I guess there was also a cardboard box on fire too which he took outside. I yelled for him to put it out (since our porch is wood) he said the porch wasn't on fire but I really didn't care.

Well a few things we learned early this morning:
1) Yoda (the dog) who barks at NOTHING will not bark at SOMETHING
2) It takes about 10 hours for a small coal to burn through plastic
3) Our fire alarm which worked BEFORE we replaced the battery doesn't work with the new battery (this is the fire alarm in the basement with the woodstove).
4) Cailyn will not go in our bed if we want her to but will go when we don't want her to.
5) My husband will admit his own stupidity without any prodding by me.
6) Gerald said we learned to be more careful - I replied with "he" learned to be more careful so he said I learned I need to keep a closer eye on my husband!

So our entire house was filled with smoke - we opened all the windows and had a really cold night - hopefully the smell will get out! Gerald was outside already this morning and when he came back in he said the scent was faint. If the fire alarm in that basement would of worked our house wouldn't have been as filled with smoke. I think it's good that we moved bedrooms too - the kids rooms were not near as smoke filled - unfortunately for Jared - his carseat was outside our bedroom door, which was quite smoky. I wanted Cailyn to sleep with us after that, but she replied No I sleep in my bed....and rolled over and went back to sleep. Kids can sleep through fire alarms! Well Jared didn't at least. We have a couple holes in the carpet in the basement - that's ok because it's ugly anyways.

Fire alarms at that time really wake a person up! I am really happy and thankful my house didn't burn down! Now to back up all my pictures on a CD and take pictures of all our valuables for insurance.

5 comments:

Mark, Linda, Alex, Carsten & Savannah said...

Wow! You left them in the house?!? Didn't you listen in church about the house in Chatham area that just burned down? They left ashes in the garage and they now have $150,000 damage? Glad nothing serious happened to yours. Get your fire detector changed too so you are more safe.

Sylvia said...

I was my Dh who left them in the house - I didn't know he cleaned out the woodstove.

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's scary! I'm glad that nothing more serious happened! Thankfully you had another working smoke detector... we won't think of what could have happened if you didn't. Hopefully that smoke smell goes away soon.

Laura said...

Oh my goodness! How scary! Thankgoodness everyone is okay! Hopefully you will be able to get a better working smoke detector and hopefully Gerald will not make the same mistake again! YIKES! I would have been very scared!

Anonymous said...

Glad everything worked out fine. You sure know how to make messes in your house.lol