Close Call!

Last Monday we had a very scary experience. For dinner Richard decided to try out our new electric smoker that he bought. So he put in a roast and some potatoes. He left it in the garage but ended up moving the smoker outside, because it had made our house all smokey. Go figure!! Anyways, we had supper and it was delicious. I asked the girls to go downstairs and clean up while I cleaned up supper. The house still had a smokey smell too it, but I wasn't worried about it.

All of the sudden I heard Brianna yelling and she ran up the stairs crying and yelling, "Mom, our cardboard in the garage is burning and we want to color on it." I was so confused. She was so upset, so I yelled down to Richard to come up. We came to the garage door and opened it and was shocked to see flames almost hitting the ceiling in our garage. Richard yelled for me to call 911. I grabbed all the kids and we ran upstairs. I called 911 and told them we needed a fire truck. By this time the kids were all yelling and a little scared. The operator asked me where I was and I told her we were upstairs, she then told me to get out of the house. Duh!! Not sure what I was thinking. So I opened the front door and was pushing all the kids outside. They were all in the jammies and bare feet. By this time DJ was in hysterics and the girls weren't sure what to do. We ran around to the suburban and I put them in. I was going to back it down the driveway away from the garage, but realized my keys and purse were in the bootroom. I think our neighbours saw me pushing my screaming kids out the door and they ran over to see what was wrong.

By this time Richard had grabbed a hose and had run around the outside of the house to hook it up. He then opened the other garage door and was spraying the flames. The operator was yelling at me to get my husband out of there. I was watching Richard and could see he wasn't in immediate danger and almost had the fire out. But she kept yelling at me and told me she wasn't dispatching the fire department till he was out. So I yelled, "Richard get out of the garage." He looked over at me with a funny look on his face, while I then said into the phone, "OK he's out." Yup, I lied. |About 2mins later the fire department arrived. By this time Richard had the fire under control. But they came and made sure everything was out. They then helped him determine what had started it. Usually we park our suburban in the garage but, because of everything we bought on the weekend we had left it outside. There was a lot of empty cardboard boxes, big ones, and Richard had smashed them all and stuffed them into the biggest box. It was sitting in the middle of the garage. He had set his charger on top of the cardboard box and had put his drill battery in to recharge. They think that it had gotten too hot and started the fire. Everything happened so fast that at the time I wasn't too scared, just shocked. But once we all got back in the house, I started shaking and was freaking myself out by thinking of everything that could of happened.

We were so blessed that nothing was damaged. The only thing that burned was all the cardboard boxes, and they were all empty. The walls didn't have any damage either. The girls were the ones that realized there was a fire. They were cleaning up the basement and saw smoke coming through the garage door. They opened the door and saw the flames and ran up and told me. I realized then that we need to sit down and have a talk about fire and fire drills. Luckily nothing bad happened. I feel really blessed. I just couldn't sleep that night. I kept waking up and making sure I couldn't smell smoke. I was very freaked out.

Oh to make that night even better, after we all got back in the house the kids wanted to go ahead and make the mini donuts that we were planning on making. DJ was still very freaked out and didn't want me to set him down. So I sat him on the cupboard. I forgot that  I had plugged in the donut maker (electric, like a waffle iron), and his leg touched the edge of it. It burnt it so bad. The skin peeled off right away. Some of the volunteer firemen were still here and gave me some stuff for burns. I put it on his leg and covered it with dressing. It looks much better now, but I felt so bad. The poor little guy was crying and just wanted to cuddle on his bed. He fell asleep like that. I felt horrible. The next morning he kept telling me he had a big ouie, but it was all better! Good thing kids are so resilient. I still felt bad though.

So that was our very close call. We were so lucky that we had caught it right away or we would be without a house. Plus I was so thankful that Richard was home when it happened or else we would be without a house, because I had no clue where he had put away the hoses. Anyways, luckily everything is ok and we can learn from that experience. We are having a electrician come over to our house and wire a smoke detector into our garage and hook it up to our house one, so it will go off next time. Hopefully there won't be a next time, but better to be prepared then sorry.