bae
12-22-13, 3:59pm
Near miss...
The woodstove had been burning a bit lame and smoky all day, which I'd attributed to the weather conditions and perhaps damp wood.
About 30 minutes after we went to bed last night, my daughter, whose bedroom is on the upper floor of the house, began yelling. Wife sprung out of bed to investigate, gets a few steps out of our bedroom, turns back and tells me the woodstove is smoking, bad, and I need to Deal With It.
I grumble, she says "no, really!"
I stump out. Look at it. Look at the haze of smoke at the ceiling level.
Blink.
Wife moves daughter down a floor, tucks her into bed in a safer spot, gathers the pets.
I dial up the fire station, get the officer in charge on his way with a rig. I jump into my firefighting PPE, and get to work... Turns out it is handy to have a firefighting living on-premises, this was the shortest response time for me ever :)
As I'm having at it, my daughter stumbles back up to the ground floor - she'd been stashed down in my man-cave. "Dad, your fire radio went off, there's a call. It's for *here*..." She blinks. "And you're in your penguin suit... that can't be good!" Pause "I think I'm grabbing some shoes and a jacket."
Still don't know what the root cause was, put out whatever was going on by liberal application of water to generate immense volumes of steam, and some ventilation. Knocked down the fire in the stove itself enough to pick up the fuel, throw it into a metal can, and carry it to a safe place outside. Stayed up much of the night with the thermal imaging camera, electing not to tear open the walls since it was cold and nasty out, and we suspected we got to it in time.
Chimney had been cleaned and serviced in October. Wood nice dry fir, aged 2+ years easily.
Of note: the smoke detectors didn't go off until I started putting water onto the event, even though there was a thick haze in the air, and the air quality was very poor. I put on an N95 mask while I was working, as my SCBA was on the rig that wasn't in my driveway yet. The mask was black on the outside by the time I was done, you don't want to be breathing that.
Keep some good fire extinguishers handy, practice with those suckers, call friends for backup if you think something is amiss!
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0AnzJS7Dt3g/UrdM7ISyudI/AAAAAAAAI_M/sQPPQxTuurI/s720/Awesomized.jpg
The woodstove had been burning a bit lame and smoky all day, which I'd attributed to the weather conditions and perhaps damp wood.
About 30 minutes after we went to bed last night, my daughter, whose bedroom is on the upper floor of the house, began yelling. Wife sprung out of bed to investigate, gets a few steps out of our bedroom, turns back and tells me the woodstove is smoking, bad, and I need to Deal With It.
I grumble, she says "no, really!"
I stump out. Look at it. Look at the haze of smoke at the ceiling level.
Blink.
Wife moves daughter down a floor, tucks her into bed in a safer spot, gathers the pets.
I dial up the fire station, get the officer in charge on his way with a rig. I jump into my firefighting PPE, and get to work... Turns out it is handy to have a firefighting living on-premises, this was the shortest response time for me ever :)
As I'm having at it, my daughter stumbles back up to the ground floor - she'd been stashed down in my man-cave. "Dad, your fire radio went off, there's a call. It's for *here*..." She blinks. "And you're in your penguin suit... that can't be good!" Pause "I think I'm grabbing some shoes and a jacket."
Still don't know what the root cause was, put out whatever was going on by liberal application of water to generate immense volumes of steam, and some ventilation. Knocked down the fire in the stove itself enough to pick up the fuel, throw it into a metal can, and carry it to a safe place outside. Stayed up much of the night with the thermal imaging camera, electing not to tear open the walls since it was cold and nasty out, and we suspected we got to it in time.
Chimney had been cleaned and serviced in October. Wood nice dry fir, aged 2+ years easily.
Of note: the smoke detectors didn't go off until I started putting water onto the event, even though there was a thick haze in the air, and the air quality was very poor. I put on an N95 mask while I was working, as my SCBA was on the rig that wasn't in my driveway yet. The mask was black on the outside by the time I was done, you don't want to be breathing that.
Keep some good fire extinguishers handy, practice with those suckers, call friends for backup if you think something is amiss!
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0AnzJS7Dt3g/UrdM7ISyudI/AAAAAAAAI_M/sQPPQxTuurI/s720/Awesomized.jpg