Got a knock on the door tonight at about 6 PM, was the local BI’s wife sent by the BI, asking if I could help out down the road. Nice colonial reproduction, about 15 yrs old. The local fire dept was just mopping up. Not much left but a scotched shell. Fortunately, no one was hurt but they lost the family dog. The FD (all volunteer) was looking for someone to button it up for the night. Lumber yard was closed so I had to run to the nearest HD for 15 sheets of OSB.
Called a buddy and we had the windows and doors sealed up in less than a couple of hours thanks to the Paslode nailers.
The owner was there, pretty much in shock, just staring at the whole mess. It was not pretty. Just about everything they owned was in charred or melted heaps in the snow banks outside the house.
Fire marshall is coming tomorrow to investigate.
Just a reminder to keep the batteries in your smoke alarms fresh. Fire’s ugly.
Replies
Nasty; sorry to hear of it. You're right about the alarm batteries. It's odd that a BI would overlook such a thing, but I guess it's an easy oversight... I wish them well.
Scott.
Always remember those first immortal words that Adam said to Eve, “You’d better stand back, I don’t know how big this thing’s going to get.”
Do not think he said anything about any batteries not there or BI missing anything, just a reminder to have yours fresh.
Last year I was at daughter's doing something in their garage and SIL went out to close the tailgate on the car. Came back in and said "their house is on fire". We ran over, made sure the owner's GF and daughter and grandbaby were out.
They had a dog in back yard and I tried to get the gate open but could not take the smoke and I was almost crawling. His neighbor took a couple of boards off his fence and got it out.
A pickup and Explorer were parked right up next to garage door. Finally got the lady to find her keys and had a very hard time starting them because of the oxygen deprived air. That surprised me a bit.
Talked to the fire marshal investigator several times. He kept trying to see it as suspicious but turned out stupid smoking daughter tossed a cig but in a trash can on patio (only vinyl corner of a brick veneer home). It went up wall and into attic space and spread like crazy.
They do not live too far from FD so they got there quick but first dummy truck driver parked in front of house in middle of street and the other six had to go behind including the ladder/boom which could have been right over the house. The pumper was behind it and they hooked to hydrant way down the road when there was one just down street.
The pumper sat there and sent a 4" shot of water out the bottom for about two hours. Not sure why that was.
They just moved in to their replacement, it was a great upgrade. Did crawlspace after they removed the old slab.
I thought you were going to say to keep the batteries in your Paslode charged
;)
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why not just build houses that cannot burn
.
two ways to screw up concrete 1) concrete driver 2) concrete finisher
why not just build houses that cannot burn
Because it's not the house, it's "stuff" inside that is the problem.
Furniture, clothing, rugs, food, "stuff"--it all burns.
Only advantage a non-flammable structure has is that does not burn down too. (Getting the soot smells out of the concrete can be tough, though.)Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
<<Because it's not the house, it's "stuff" inside that is the problem.Furniture, clothing, rugs, food, "stuff"--it all burns.>>And that's a fact.I was a paid firefighter for about 5 years, a volunteer before that.Some of the hottest places I was ever inside of involved structures that didn't burn.Second hottest was a steel building.By far the hottest was inside a steel ship, and the amount of burning contents was surprisingly small.