Grilling Accident and Dry Leaves Cause House Fire
The following are pictures Kim took on a very sad day in our neighborhood last week: the house across the court from us caught fire. The fire and subsequent smoke and water damage have destroyed nearly everything in it. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the owners are fully insured. The insurance company has already gone to work to triage the damage (those pictures were on our other camera). We’ll certainly be watching how the insurance company performs.
The Story: One of the homeowners was cooking his wife dinner on a charcoal grill on the back deck. A hot coal escaped from the grill and ignited dry leaves below the deck that had not been cleaned up last fall. The fire quickly spread through the leaves and then caught the deck itself on fire.
Kim smelled the fire from inside our house and ran out to see what was happening. She called 911 and was told she was the third report of the fire in 5 minutes. She said that within 2 minutes of the deck catching, the fire spread up the whole back of the house, up into the second story, and through the attic. It’s amazing how fast a fire spreads through a stick-built house, particularly in dry weather…
The Baltimore County fire department arrived in just over 5 minutes and quickly contained and extinguished the fire. We commend them for the quick and effective response! It makes us feel very good to have a responsive fire department close by, even though we hope to never use them!
Of course, the kids loved seeing the fire trucks (I particularly like the picture Kim took of the fire truck in the third row). It’s unfortunate that it was under these cirumstances that they got to see them.
What do you think? Have you had a great experience with your local fire department? Do you have leaves under your deck you need to rake up?!?
April 28th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Wow! That happened really fast. Glad nobody was hurt and the owners are insured. About 4 years ago, at our rental house we had a forest fire burn almost up the garage. The fire truck rolled up just in time to spray the wood pile before in caught fire. Scary.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
As I read your post, I thought about the pile of leaves sitting underneath my deck. You can bet I’m going to sweep them up first chance I get. What a sad story. At least no one was hurt.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
When I wrote this, I began to think twice about what other fire hazards I might be keeping around the house. It spread very quickly - without much warning, and the owner saw it and was helpless to keep it from spreading.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:33 am
I left a candle burning once as I fell asleep. We had paper window shades, the breeze blew them in, touched the candle and the paper went up - Whoosh! We woke up to flames above our heads. Fortunately, the damage was limited to the headboard and the window frame - which we repaired ourselves without ever telling the landlord. It was scary though and taught 2 good lessons. Never leave a candle burning (even though it appears to have gone out, always extinguish it anyway) and always know where the fire extinguisher is.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Well, in college, I walked up the stairs to my floor, opened the door and was greeted with a wall of smoke. Apparently some stupid girl (she was stupid, not all girls are stupid) was boiling hair dye or something, left the pot on the stove and forgot about it. Water boiled off, started burning the crap in there. Lots of smoke…there was some flames, which my friend doused prior to my arrival. Meanwhile, my idiot dorm-mates are all standing around looking at the smoke in their suites like it was a joke. I called the RA and said, “You all can stand here, but I’m leaving, even if the fire alarm isn’t going off.” My friend and I were briefly treated for smoke inhalation and got a brief mention in the campus newspaper for saving the dorm from a fire. It was hilarious, because we really didn’t do anything.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Yikes!! We have no deck and a gas grill, but I’ll admit to two serious hazardous errors with it:
First, just after we moved from a concrete block beach cottage where our grill was less than a foot away from the house, I learned the hard way that you can’t put a gas grill that close to a house that has vinyl siding. Oops. No fire or serious damage, but there’s now a rather ugly patch of wavy siding in back.
Then just last month I went to pre-heat the grill for its inaugural use for this spring, I started all the burners, closed the lid, went inside, then when I went back out later with the steaks there was a big patch of soot on the front of the lid and the handle just below there was on the ground - melted. Apparently there is a known problem (except I didn’t know it) with spiders making wee little nests inside the tubes in your grill over the winter, that can block up the gas enough to then turn it temporarily into a mini-flamethrower out one of the handles. No one was in front of it to get hurt, or to notice the initial smoking that likely happened before the flame.
We just live and learn and hope for continued good luck!
May 24th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Leslie - pretty amazing story - I had no idea that spiders’ nests are known to block up a burner.
As for the melted siding, we’ve had a few friends experience similar. We’ve still got aluminum here, so no worries on melting.. a little worry on whether something *behind* the aluminum would catch, though. So we try to keep the grill a safe distance away while we’re cooking.
May 25th, 2008 at 12:27 am
I had no idea until this year. Here’s a link with a picture of how to clean things out - note in the diagram it even calls the brush used to clean out the tubes a “spider brush.”
http://www.appliancefactoryparts.com/gasgrillparts/helpcenter/burner.html#venturi