Near-disaster

[jay]

Whew. That was *this* close to a very serious, life-threatening problem....

16-year-old James was babysitting his brothers, who had gone to bed at the time that patgreene and I had gone out for Thai food for dinner (9pm), leaving James up. Afterward we swung by the Krispy Kreme drive-through, drove around a bit and returned home around 11pm. And... I smelled smoke. In the hallway... stronger at one end than another, which together with the kind of smell (more like burning paper, than wood) caused me to think it wasn't a neighbor's fireplace.

The nursery door... was closed.

I went in, there was much more smoke, looked up and saw yellow coming from David's upper bunk, leapt across, I struggled to grab the quilt (which I thought was on fire )and pull it and David down and apart.

It was smoldering, but not aflame. A light -- a wall sconce -- had fallen down off of the wall and on to his blankets, and the heat of the bulb had burned/melted through two charred holes eight inches across. What I'd thought were flames was the light from the bulb. I'm thankful for the 1970s laws that mandated flame-retardant materials and treatments for children's bedding -- the charred quilt was a old toddler-era Peter Rabbit cover that we hadn't gotten around to replacing. Had it burst into flames, David would at the least have been badly burned, and the whole house might have gone up (we have mahogany wood panelling on the walls, not plaster).

James was aghast and ashamed, blaming himself... he'd blithely assumed a neighbor's wood-burning fireplace was the cause, and hadn't looked into his brothers' bedroom. I'm glad that Pat and I weren't out longer on our date!

Comments

[deedeebythebay.livejournal.com]

Oh gods. Thank goodness he's ok. That they're all ok. Really, James probably couldn't have known and being 16 doesn't necessarily have the life experience/knowledge to know. Poor guy. Poor all of them. Oh I'm so glad they're ok. *hugs*

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

It was *scary*... we could have lost all of them, had things gone differently. I've tried to reassure James.

[deedeebythebay.livejournal.com]

Oh I can only imagine. Well, actually, I can know. We were living in Burns, OR (often the coldest spot in the nation) and we had an oil furnace. We awoke in the middle of the night to the fire alarm going off and we could see bright orange and red and smoke and we had two babies at the time......turned out that one of us had left the box of matches on top of the furnace and it had gotten hot enough to ignite them. They would have done nothing but smoke damage, thank God, but man was that scary!!!!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Speaking of smoke damage... know of any good ways to get rid of the lingering smell? All of the actual smoke is long-since aired out of the kids' room, but it still reeks in there.

[deedeebythebay.livejournal.com]

Wash everything. Wipe down the walls. Open the windows. Use a spray with a "pretty" smell that everyone can tolerate (or better yet like) and spray the mattress and carpet. Often places like Trader Joes, Berkeley Bowl and/or Rainbow have natural products that are good at getting rid of the .... chemicals (?) .... that are left that are causing the odor.

That, and time.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

This means that David and Kevin will actually have to clean out and pick up their room, in order to *see* the carpet... not a bad thing. ;)

[shadopanther.livejournal.com]

Freebreeze is also good at getting rid of odors (eg: spraying on a mattress).

I am very glad to read that no one was hurt and you were able to rescue the situation in time!!

*hugs*