Wacky fire damage scenerios. - We didn't start the fire...

[B&BGaryC]

What is the strangest fire starter in any fire damage you have done? Most of them seem pretty straight forward "well duh" kind of situations... Until this happened to me:

A 14 foot piece of trim that ran across my ceiling fell halfway down, hitting my stove hood, flexed around it, smacked the dial for the back burner and turned it on high, the other end of the trim broke loose, the whole board fell, with one end directly over the burner on high and the other end in a box of newspapers I use to start fires in my woodstove.

Thank God I decided not to come in until the afternoon. I woke up to this commotion and grabbed a thumping stick and headed out to my kitchen expecting to find a daytime burglar (which is becoming common in town). I caught it 60 seconds into it. It would have been 5 or 6 hours until I got home normally.

 

[dgardner]

Good thing you caught it in time. With a setup like that, the fire investigator would have never believed it was an accident!

"So let me understand this - one end turned the burner on, and the other end fell into a box of newspapers... Riiiiiight...."

 

[Ryan]

Why did you have a box of newspapers?

 

[RIP IT]

Why did you have a box of newspapers?

to get a new kitchen for the cost of the insurance excess :wink:

 

[dgardner]

Why did you have a box of newspapers?

and the other end in a box of newspapers I use to start fires in my woodstove.

 

[J Scott W]

A tech that worked for me was using a thermal fogger as the last step ina fire clean-up.. Decided the place needed lots of deodorization, so she set the dail to "Heavy."

Thermal fogger basically became a flame thrower. Drapes that were 6" to 10" away caught fire from the flame that shoot out from the front of the fogger.

She pulled the drapes down and stomp out the fire. Came close to having another fire damage to do, this one on us. (We did start this fire.)