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

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(nods) It is easy to get to a despondent-parent, "how can I ever anticipate every danger to my kids?" state, after stuff like this happens. But, well, one can't. IMO, it's a bit like workplace safety... I just hope that I set up enough safeguards and good practices to catch minor problems before they become major ones.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, exactly. There's this weird thing with individuation. I mean, I still feel terrible about the time my kid was bitten by a dog when I wasn't there to protect him. But then again, I'm so happy that he dealt with it, did what he could to help himself, and came out of it without being terrified of dogs. Now he knows he can deal with some really scary stuff without a grown-up to save him, but I still wish I'd been there to save him, you know? And I *know* my mom feels the same way about the time I was stabbed when she was a block away, asleep in her bed.