Fire safety 101

I'm reasonably sure that no one in this forum needs to hear this, but I'm going to repeat it just in case (and also in hopes that it spreads quicker than flames in modern building materials):

DO.
NOT.
PUT.
ASHES.
FROM.
YOUR.
WOOD.
FIRE.
IN.
THE.
RUBBISH.

Thank you.

I did not have "being first responder as the neighbour's house and car were burning" on my Monday bingo card. Or so I thought. I was sitting here minding my business when I heard what I initially thought was a nail gun. Then it was obvious that it was the popping sound of a hot fire, so I looked out the window, saw black smoke, and yelled to my wife to call 111.

Grabbed a fire extinguisher, jumped the fence and ran next door. The remains of a wheelie bin and the front of a car were fully ablaze and the corner of the house and an attached wood fence were also going up. I pointed the extinguisher at the house, exhausted it in less than 30 seconds, and ran to the next neighbour's to get a hose going. With that on full blast, I sheltered behind their fence as the tyres exploded and just concentrated on keeping the house from catching.

Our local fire brigade was a no-show because they couldn't raise a crew, so it took 15 minutes for a truck to arrive from the city. By that time a few others had joined me and we had the worst of it out...just the car was still going. Every now and again some alloy casting would fall out of the engine bay, burning white hot and spitting.

The tenants had probably never lived in a house with a wood fire before. The remains of the wheelie bin had a big mound of ashes right in the middle. From there, the flames had easy access to the timber deck, the PVC downpipe, and painted trim. Away it went and started on the nice dry board fence, and the plastic front bumper of the car probably caught around the same time. All those manmade materials really helped to get the blaze going and spreading fast. And the smoke...wow. Toxic indeed. I'm just glad there was a breeze and I could try to remain upwind before I got behind the fence.

Good post. Of course, in the northern half of the world we have summer coming on. But to run with your caution, even ashes several days old can result is a fire.

Phil Stevens wrote:Grabbed a fire extinguisher, jumped the fence and ran next door. The remains of a wheelie bin and the front of a car were fully ablaze and the corner of the house and an attached wood fence were also going up. I pointed the extinguisher at the house, exhausted it in less than 30 seconds, and ran to the next neighbour's to get a hose going. With that on full blast, I sheltered behind their fence as the tyres exploded and just concentrated on keeping the house from catching.

Nicely done, Phil. You're a good neighbour.

All the house fires that I know of have been from two sources:

Putting ashes from cleaning out a fireplace near combustibles.

Using candles near combustibles.

Another source of fires is parking a hot car/truck on dry grass.

My neighbor came by yesterday and we got to talking about housefires.

We live a long way from the volunteer fire department.  

My neighbor suggested that there is a need to have several fire extinguishers.

I told him I keep baking soda aka bicarbonate of soda handy near the kitchen stove for just that purpose.

My philosophy has been that the further I live from a fire department …in terms of response time, the more fire extinguishers I should have.  I have about 20.  One is attached to the tractor …another to the mower.

I should add that knowing how to use a fire extinguisher is critical.  I have seen people spread the fire with one by blasting at the base of the fire , as is often taught, from too close of a range and sending the burning material into the air.

The one, fully out of control, destroy everything, house fire that I've seen was an electrical fault on a fridge. The others have all been stove tops being left on accidentally.

In a domestic setting, I want a fire blanket in the kitchen and if the electrical breaker is by the main exit, then lots of water.

For garages or industrial, powder, powder, powder. Works on all fire types, including electrical and oil. is your friend. CO2 is great in very specific environments, that in my opinion, we're not really going to be talking about here.

But prevention is far more important and unfortunately mundane than the cool extinguishers and fire hoses. Good housekeeping is where it's at, store stuff properly and turn off electrical stuff when not in use.

We had 3 real fires onboard the ship last year, enclosed big metal box+tons of fuel+air to breathe = the makings of a massive bomb. Weekly fire drills and training wasn't fun but very reassuring when that experience was necessary.

Hi James,

Once we bought a super stove, that was used, back in the 70s.  It had an insane number of buttons and dials.  It looked like it controlled an airplane.  It was “haunted”.  It has two ovens that would turn on an off without human intervention.  The burners would do the same.  I discovered that there were timers for everything. Being pre computer era, it wasn’t as easy as unplugging the thing to reset.  During the first 48 hours of owning it we had a number of close calls until we figured out the problem was with the stove and not us.

John F Dean wrote:Hi James,

Once we bought a super stove, that was used, back in the 70s.  It an an insane number of buttons and dials.  It looked like it controlled an airplane.  It was “haunted”.  It has two ovens that would turn on an off without human intervention.  The burners would do the same.  I discovered that there were timers for everything. Being pre computer era, it wasn’t as easy as unplugging the thing to reset.  During the first 48 hours of owning it we had a number of close calls until we figured out the problem was with the stove and not us.

eeesh, that sounds nasty.

In the crew galley on the ship there is an isolator switch for every oven in the crew galley. If you're not actively using the oven, that switch is off. (Two of the fires onboard happened when people didn't turn them off)

We also have a cutout timer, if the reset button isn't pushed every 15mins, then power gets cut to the whole galley.

The timer is possibly extreme for a home situation rather than six commercial ovens for the 300 crew to use but our oven at home is always isolated when it isn't being used.

That stove story reinforces my view that timers on cooking equipment should only control when to turn off an active element. I don't want something that could start heating independently of my awareness or supervision...I have a hard enough time not letting my bone broth pans boil dry and fill the house with smoke.

I am surprised leaving an electric stove element can catch fire?
why, how?

Good thread. Many people have a concept of "fire safety", but don't realize that "ash safety" is a close neighbor to a cigarette butt that's not quite out landing where it shouldn't.

Friend of mine who I thought would have known better, tried to dump ashes from her indoor pizza oven into a plastic bucket. They melted through and left a trail of ash and she was at least on the ball enough to put it down on a ceramic tile floor before the disaster grew.

We heat with wood, and hubby saw some ~5 liter metal buckets at a hardware store and bought 4 of them. We had a couple of metal lids that fit them decently. He empties the ashes into one of these, and they go out onto a cool concrete floor behind the house. Eventually, I spread the ashes places on the homestead that can use them, but that's well past the cooled point.

It's amazing how often a chunk of wood gets buried in the woodstove and turned into "charcoal". If charcoal can cook your steak, it can cook your plastic garbage can!

Hubby says firefighters call PVC "solid gasoline" because of the embodied energy it represents. I'm glad that our downspouts are metal and our house is stucco - although I've been told that all stucco is not the same and some can have plastics in it, but I believe ours is old enough that it doesn't.

John C Daley wrote:I am surprised leaving an electric stove element can catch fire?
why, how?

Because people get sloppy when they think it's off.

Clothes, microwaves, all sorts of stuff gets dumped when it's 'just another surface'. I cut out a section of cable and rewired the plug on a food blender when I noticed it had rested on a hotplate that people thought was off. I probably should have reported it but I was in there filling up my water bottle so I just did it.  

John, I've seen it happen. Pan of food is on the stove, all the water evaporates, and as soon as ignition temperature is reached you've got a fire. If there's any fat involved it gets big fast.

On a statistical level, cooking is by far the greatest cause of house fires. Inattention is the biggest factor.

OK, I thought people were talking about an 'empty' element.

I was especially fortunate with the electric range. My wife worked at a factory that made parts for a variety of kitchen ranges.  While they did not make the parts for the brand we had, the people there were able advise me about how to bypass the timers.