Goodness Gracious…

Let me start this post off the way all posts by me should be started, I am fine and it wasn’t my fault.

Hold on! Hold on! As Conan says I haven’t even done anything yet.

Well now that your interest may have been roused let me tell you what happened at about 6:30, say 7 o’clock last night (well actually two nights ago, Thursday night, by the time I finish writing this and your read it.


It was a cool desert (mmm….desert) night, like many others before it. However it was not to stay cool very long. I was in my room, tucked away in the corner at my computer diligently compiling a Spanish composition days ahead of its scheduled due date (and if you believe that then I can get you a hell-uva deal for 49er’s super bowl tickets –hint: its never going to happen-) anyway I figured I might have been alone in the apartment at that time, nothing goin on, just waiting until seven to start some dinner (Quaker oatmeal, mmmm good). My one roommate Simon is off at classes and I thought my other roommate David was visiting some friends ‘cause I hadn’t heard form him in a while.

So in any case all of a sudden I hear the door fly open, or at least sound like it was being opened in haste. Just figuring that it was David in a hurry to grab something I ignored the rapid breaching of the door as I usually do. Then I hear the pitter patter of quick moving feet going outside and then a moment later back inside. Again, because of the riveting Spanish assignment I kept on ignoring it. However soon after the footsteps returned I heard David’s voice trail down the hallways calling to me.

He said “…Umm Andrew there’s a fire.”

Before I go on this may be a good place to re-iterate that everyone is fine and it still is not my fault. But I’ll get to that soon enough.

“There’s a what!” I say as I move quickly up form my chair a bit bewildered, slightly unsure that I heard him right as David has the tendency to mumble.

“Fire!” Daivd says with more confidence and gusto as if he has just assured himself that it really is there.

By this time I am already walking briskly down the short hallway and I no longer need David’s confirmation. I can’t see the fire because it is still around the corner but
I can see the yellow and orange flickers off the wall and the hallway is thick with smoke. My room is at the end of a hallway, not a long hallway but a hallway none the less, and being in the far corner of my room I hadn’t smelled anything up to this point. Now as I walk out of my room my eyes are watering and I can definitely smell and see the smoke.

When David first said there was a fire the initial thought that popped into my head was that a paper towel or a dishrag fell on the stove and flamed up. Even when I was walking down the hallway towards the kitchen where the fire was, I was still holding out hope that it was just a particularly smoking dishrag or paper towel that really, really flamed up.

No such luck.

I get to the kitchen and the entire stove area is engulfed in flames. As well as the underside of the cabinets, the fan on top of the stove, the side of the microwave, back wall, and cabinet doors. And not tiny flames either. These were big time, tall, serious flames that shot up high and warmed me up right from seven or eight feet away.

When I got there David put into words just about what I was thinking. “Holy Schmitt! (well not schmitt, another s-word with 4 letters but still), What do we do? Do you have a fire extinguisher?”

Knowing that I indeed did not have a fire extinguisher, but remembering my learning from Advanced Science I recalled that fire and water usually will not mix, unless under the right conditions or you say the three magic words that scientists have yet to discover. Luckily it was burning on the side of the stove that was not next to the fridge. We have one of those plastic water pitchers with the filter on top. And again luckily, I had just filled it up a few hours ago so the pitcher was pretty full.

I swung open the fridge, grabbed the pitcher, ripped the filling top off and tossed the anti-firebodies at what appeared to be the center of the surging inferno, a small blue pot.

As I started my motion to toss the water my roommate David, impressively managing to stay a little timid in his speaking patters said “…Umm I’m not sure that’s a good idea….”

However it was too late for objections, the tossing motion was complete and a flood of water should be coming out of the pitcher any second now! …any second now… Well instead of the great splash of water I was expecting, instead we received a tiny squirt of water that hit the fan shroud above the stove and instantly sizzled off. I looked down at the pitcher to make sure I was holding it with the open hole side up. However looking down at the container I quickly noticed my error. While I remembered to take the filling to off, I forgot to take the top with the filter container in it off as well. The piece that holds the filter in place also acts as a second top to ensure that the unfiltered commoner’s water will not mix with our high society water. That’s all well and good except when you need an improvised fire bucket.

However almost at the same time as the ill-fated first toss, the ceiling began to fall down on top of us. Maybe I should explain. You see the kitchen ceiling is basically large plastic tiles to cover the florescent bulbs that light up the kitchen. However the fire already melted some of the smaller tiles close to the fire. After I missed, the larger, farther away ceiling tiles became ductile enough from the heat in order to slip out of their braces and fall down. So there I am in a small kitchen with an out of control raging fire, the ceiling is collapsing all around us, and my pitcher full of water is plugged.

I gave myself a moment to take in the humor of the moment and realized that I was in a small kitchen with an out of control raging fire, the ceiling is collapsing all around us, and my pitcher full of water is plugged. So I ripped off the second top to finally reveal the sweet fire killer beneath. However I still noticed that David was apparently still talking. “…it’s just you see I was heating up some oil and…” Too late for objections again! I was already starting the forward motion to toss the water. Wait, did he just say oil?!?! Haven’t I been told that you should never throw water onto an oil fire because the oil may get on top of the water and then spread the fire around quicker and over a bigger area?!?! Uh-oh. The interior monolog was too late in coming. This time the flood to water was really out and heading straight for the oil fire and the small blue oil pot at the center.

Fortunately the water did not knock the pot over and splash/spill flaming oil everywhere. Fortunately there was enough water to cover the flaming oil on the counters and not allow the oil to float on top and keep burning. Fortunately the toss was on target enough to take out the heart of the fire. The bottoms and sides of the cabinets were still on fire as were the door edges but the worse was out. I grabbed the bowl of David’s rice maker and started filling it up at the sink to take out the last of the flames and David grabbed his old frying pan to help. A few refills and the flames were out. I took advantage of the break in the action to go secure my most precious belongings. I turned off my computer, laptop, T.V. and Xbox so that if the fire sprung up again I could carry them out the window without having to wait for them to shutdown and risk losing precious data.

I came back into the kitchen to see how things were holding up. I noticed David looking up into the fan exhaust pipe. I started to ask why but then saw the orange around the edge. The fire was still burning behind the middle cabinets where the fan’s exhaust pipe goes up. So I walked to the sink and began filling up the rice cooker bowl again as David said “…I think the fire is still burning…” I few more hard splashes up in the crack and all traces of the fire were gone. Well except for the blackened kitchen, the wet charcoal-ridden floor, the distinct smell of burnt and melted plastic, and or course the smoke.

Oh the smoke! How thick it had grown. The spider webs, which previously we could not be see because of how well they blended into the white ceiling; turned black. Hours after the ordeal when I went to blow my nose…well I wont bore you with the gory details, but it came out completely black. The apartment was full of smoke in every room. David and I proceeded to open every door and window in the apartment. Of neighbors who live across and above us were actually walking by when we started to air out the apartment and they were nice enough to lend us their fan to help blow the smoke out the door. So it just goes to show you that if you want to be good friends with your neighbors just try and burn your apartment down.

If you’ll allow me, I will give it my best shot at figuring out exactly what happened from the tiny clues I could get out of David.

David did not actually go out to see his friends that night; he was just particularly deep into an online game that night and was being very quiet. As the evening wore on David became increasingly hungry. Org slaying is not an easy business. Well he decided that he wanted to make a type of fried chicken recipe that he did perfectly the first time and has since failed miserable trying to make the last few time; creating what he would call nasty tar instead of a nice meal.

This is not a stir fry recipe, it is a kind of deep frying and for this recipe you need a lot more oil. Got his corn oil and filled his small blue pot about one third of the way full with oil. At least that was David’s guess at how full it was, but occasionally he has been known to underestimate things.

The oil takes a little while to heat up so David turned the stove on high and then went back to his computer to pass the time. He then made that error that we have all occasionally made at one point or another (yourself excluded, of course). He forgot about the oil warming up.

Well the blue pot was a third of the way full when the oil was cool and at room temperature. Then it warmed up. Then it started to boil. Then it began to really boil. Then it boiled over the side of the pot and eventually hit the flames. The oil caught on fire, spread back to the pot and eventually all over the stove and kitchen area.

Back at David’s computer his screen began to flicker and he heard a kind of *pop*

David thought that was strange and being that his computer was next to the kitchen he decided to check out what was going on in there.

The *pop* sound that David heard was actually the light bulb in the fan exploding from the heat of the fire. David now saw the fire and managed to remember that he should not use water on oil. Most impressive of all was that he knew there should be a fire extinguisher outside between he apartment buildings.

So he ran outside bursting the door open. That is what I heard, thinking it was him coming back. At first he told me that he was not able to find a fire extinguisher outside and so returned back to the apartment an let me know that out home was on fire. However later, after the smoke had cleared, literally, I went out to find the fire extinguisher because for some reason it now seemed like a really good idea to know exactly where it was. I found it on the other side of the stairs not far form our apartment. I pointed it out to David from our door, far enough away so that he could only see the red extinguisher sitting in its cubby from the side. When we went back inside he told me that he “couldn’t believe they charge to $500.00 to use the fire extinguisher.” Knowing that he was referring to the small sticker on the front of the fire extinguisher case that said “Stealing or tampering with the fire extinguisher levies a fine of $500,” I informed David that that only applies if you are tamper with or steal the fire extinguisher and that is he used it to actually put a fire out there was not way they would charge him $500.00 for using it.

But I thought to myself that since that was no way he could have seen that warning form where I pointed it out to him, I think that means that David really did find the extinguisher but then thought that he was going to be charged $500 by the landlord for using it and so he decided to go back inside and ask me if I happened to have a fire extinguisher.

Well that’s about it. We took some pictures of the damage, we told the land lords about what happened and they sent some people over to take pictures, and David let his parents know that he may have a bigger bill in the near future.

Well in case you are interested here are some photos of the damage. I had to take these with my iSight web camera so sorry about the quality but I think they do an ok job of getting the message across.

This one is an ok overview of what happened. See the ceiling. Well usually you cant because it is hidden by the plastic covers.





Now there is a ceiling for you. See that white thing that kind of looks like a towel or dishcloth draped on the cabinet door. Yea, that used to on of the plastic light covers. It melted, fell off and draped itself on the cabinet.





Here are a couple of nice close ups of the cabinet door plastic towel.




Notice the plastic stuck on the cabinet door. Yup melted solidly on there.




Here you can kind of see how the fire spread out form the blue pot on the back right burner.



In this one you see how the paint bubbled up on the cabinet doors like when you use a hot air gun to remove paint.




This fancy upwards looking shot shows a good overview of the other side. Notice the plastic light cover that fell on the Fridge too?



This last one is of the fan and the motor inside. It took most of the heat and as you can see the motor basically just totally melted. Somewhere around there I think the fire also managed to short out the electricity over there. By the time the fire was out, the fridge was turned off and we had to plug it into a new socket and the stove, although it was gas will no longer light because it can’t make a spark.

Hey thats my line!

if you were to look about 2 posts down that is exactly what i was going to say. Well, you know, execpt for the acual words in the post. I doubt that i would ever refer to myself in the third person so many times in a row. I mean the great andrew does frefer to himself the the person of the thrid. But only when werdnA needs to remind his subjects of who he is (like they would ever be allowed to forget! ha)

but anyway, yea it has been real quiet on the blog front. but you know that really is my fault. I mean ther are really only 2 people who contribute to the blog. neD adn naneeK. i just kind of whap my head against the keyboard and publish whatever makes it onscreen. Now both of those people have an excues. They have a brand spankin (literally) new memebr of the family to take care of (which is another post i never published!) Isabel. err sorry, lebasI i dont want someone to steal your 2 week old identity and wrap up a bunch of charges on your credit cards.

So really that left me with the roll of solo poster for a little while. and i did absolutly nothing with it. sorry about that it was totally my fauslt and i- wait a minute, what am i doing. It wasnt my fault it was everybody but me's fault. I am forever perfect and can never make a mistake. Or at least that is what i am told by the media. Whew that was close i almost took responsobility for something and came close to forgetting that taking personal responsobility is illigal in today's world.

but beacuse you seemd to have asked for it here is a long freekin post with pictures that are acually relevent tot he post. I know! it is another sigh of the apocolips! better stockup on canned food because that cant be fore taht a couple horseman left.