Final Scary Thoughts

 

Dave came home tonight and we debriefed on what we thought happened yesterday.  It was one thing for me to describe the burnt out junction box.  It was quite another for him to see its charred remains.

 

Here is what we think happened.

 

We had too many appliances plugged in for the Monkey’s room to handle.  Even worse, the electrician discovered that the fuse was set to 20 amps, but that the wires could only handle 15 amps.  What this means, as far as I understand it, is that the fuse would NEVER blow, even if the wires were handling way more than they should have. 

 

Dave checked on the Monkey and noticed something was wrong.  At that point, it only seemed that something was askew, not that dangerous things were about to happen.  He unplugged the appliances and came to get me.  At this point, the outlets were already blown and if everything would have been correct (e.g, 15 amp fuse) everything should have already shut down and nothing else should have been happening.  But that wasn’t the case.

 

Instead, underneath the house, the junction box was overheating and melting the insulation.  It was trying to catch on fire.  When I came back to the room with Dave, it quite likely was smokier than when he had left.  And while we were getting the Monkey out and trying to figure out what was going on, things were getting worse.  More smoke was actually developing.  We weren't just spreading it by walking around.

 

When Dave put on his sneaks to go check the fuse box, he did the one thing we can be sure saved the house.  Now, granted, because a previous home owner did not properly install the junction box against wood, perhaps the junction box would not have caught the house on fire if Dave hadn’t turned off the fuse box, but we can never be sure, eh? 

 

So Dave turned off the fuse box.  The fire couldn't continue because there was no more electric "juice."  The miswired hot junction box was out in the open and not against a wooden stud.  Our incident didn’t develop into a real house fire.  Thank the gods.

 

We were close to bad, not that close, but certainly closer than I’ve ever been before.  What if this had happened at 2 am and not 9 pm?  What if an active fire had started and caught the wall on fire against which the baby’s crib rests?  What if we just assumed the fuse tripped and didn't check it ourselves.

 

We slept last night because the firemen checked out the house and when they came 1 ½ hours after we’d discovered a problem, nothing worse had happened.  We both feel very lucky.  I feel lucky, in particular, because my guy knows what to do in a crisis.  We weren’t in a situation where we survived by the skin of our teeth.  We had a wide margin of safety we were still working in.  But we both realize today that things could have gone really bad last night. 

 

Scary, scary, scary. 

10:25:39 PM     trackback [] Comments? []

Scary Update

The electricians just left.  We had an electrical fire under the house last night.  If Dave had not cut the juice to room, it probably would have spread.  Additionally, we were saved because they had not attached the badly wired junction box to a stud.  If they had, it's likely the wood would have continued to smolder and caught fire.  Dave, however, being the smart husband that he is, would have known this because he checked under the house.  So neither of us were over or under reacting.   It was close, very close, to being bad. 

2:33:27 PM     trackback [] Comments? []

Scary

 

Sometimes, I have an idea of what I’m going to blog about from day to day.  And then something occurs that makes me change everything.

 

Last night, it looked like it was going to be our first good sleep night with Conor in a week.  He went down at 8 and didn’t make any squeaking (or coughing) about it.  We watched Lost and then at 9:00 Dave went to check on him as we, being new parents, are likely to do. 

 

Dave came back to the family room looking pale and worried.  “I think I smelled something in the baby’s room and the appliances are all off.”  I sniffed Dave and I could smell it, too: an acrid, pungent this-is-not-good smell.  I followed him back and the smell was strong, something we both recognized as the burning smell of electrical smoke.  We turned on the hall light and saw a haze in the top part of the room.  Conor was still sleeping soundly until we both arrived, he whimpered once, and I picked him up. 

 

The smell was getting stronger in the room.  Dave had already unplugged the vaporizer and the radio.   Dave must have done that before he came to tell me as calmly as possible that something was up.  We both agreed that this had to be an electrical problem which is not a surprise in our house, but is in this room.  I finally shared with him that I suspected that outlet had problems which I had noticed by using the CD player on the radio. 

 

He put on his shoes and ran outside to check that the fuse had blown and the electricity was off.  However, the fuse had not blown.  Despite the fact that appliances were off and there was growing smoke in the baby’s room, the fuse had not blown.  That piece of information continues to bother me.  I don’t know much about electricity, but I’ve always thought that when there’s a problem, the fuse blows to stop anything worse from happening.  Here we have a problem, and in my un-electricity knowing mind, we could be heading towards a worse problem. 

 

Dave turned off the electricity to that room and the two rooms/circuits beside it.  We checked that the smoke alarms were both working (yes, two (!) outside the baby’s room: one regular and one connected to ADT).  So not enough smoke had developed to cause an alarm to go off, which bugs me because I can regularly set off the alarm with my cooking, but the alarm won’t go off when there’s real smoke in the baby’s room???  To be honest, I don’t know how much smoke was there because the electricity was all off and I was so on edge that my vision was quite blurry. 

 

However, the smell seemed to be spreading (from us walking around or from a spreading, smoldering electrical fire???  I didn’t know).  While we were running around the house, shutting off circuits, disconnecting outlets (ok, Dave was doing that) and generally freaking out (that would be me), Conor was nursing quietly and giving me the look of “Please stop moving and be quiet.  I’m finally getting the best sleep I’ve had in days.”

 

Nonetheless, I’m thinking “Smoke Inhalation!  Smoke Inhalation! Smoke Inhalation!  What if he’s inhaled some of that electrical smoke and is going to have brain damage.”  Dave thought everything is fine, and I may have shouted out something along the lines of Mr. Kum-ba-fucking-ya and called the triage nurses anyway as I had vowed to do a long, long time ago.  She had me check Conor’s breathing (fine) and nail beds (fine) and asked if he was pale and blue.  “Well, he’s always pale, but he’s definitely pink, not blue.”  Weird, too, there’s an 11 year old boy who goes to our doctor with the same spelling of his first and last name.  The nurse was concerned about this when I initially told her that Conor was nursing.  Yes, we do believe in extended nursing, but not 11 years….

 

So the nurse also suggested that we call the fire department.  I was thinking the same thing even though I truly trusted that Dave had done everything “right” as far as preventing any more damage.  What if they saw something we didn’t know to look for?  And as Dave said, which would be more embarrassing:  calling out the fire department for a fire we’d already taken care of or dying from a fire we already knew about? 

 

We didn’t want to call 911 because it was not an emergency.  Dave had taken care of that.  So we called the non-emergency fire department number to ask what we should do.  Dave spoke briefly and gave our address.  They were coming out.  Dave and I both looked at each other with wide eyes.  They thought it was serious enough to come out.  “Scary,” Dave said, which, ironically, was exactly was I had been thinking I would entitle today’s blog. 

 

Two minutes later we hear the sirens.  We called non-emergency!  We didn’t need the sirens!!  All the neighbors were going to be looking!!!!  Dave quickly ushered Patches out of the house because trucks and uniforms may be more than our good collie could handle.  Dave went to meet the fire truck at the end of the driveway.

 

By this time, Conor was wide awake and very excited about the activity.  Three firemen came in, thank god, not in full break-down-the-doors-and-rescue-the-family uniforms.  The first thing they said when they walked in the door was “I can smell that.”  They checked over and approved everything Dave had done, they felt for hot spots on the floor, wall and ceiling which we had not done, and they checked under the house (like Dave had done) to see if anything funky was happening with the wiring.  They pronounced our house safe and said there was no need for a fire watch overnight, which I’m glad they said because as soon as we went to bed, I was ready to get back up for the rest of the evening. 

 

They also commented on how cute Conor is, flirting with him and calling him by name.  “How do they know is name?” I thought, “Do they have that specific info on our house?” and then I saw the wooden blocks with his name over the crib, and thought Ah!  Observant firemen, Dull mother.

 

One commented upon leaving “Conor, you get to sleep in the big bed tonight!!  I think I know who the culprit might be!”  Conor, of course, grinned.  And then I immediately thought “Even the firemen co-sleep with there kids!!!  What is up with American pediatricians that they sway co-sleeping is so wrong!?!??!?!  Everyone co-sleeps and no one talks about it!!!” 

 

When we finally went to bed, we could smell the smoky electrical smell in our closet, which is adjacent to the baby’s room.  It freaked me out all over again.  It was of great comfort to have Dave there.  He does know so much about fire and stuff.  I wouldn’t have known to do any of what he did.  I would have immediately called the fire department and would have been very scared.  Thank God Dave checked on Conor when he did.  I really think it was getting worse when Dave stopped whatever was happening. 

 

We’ve still got the electricity off to half the house.  An electrician is coming by this morning to either rewire the room or let us know if/when we can turn some of the house back on. 

 

Close.  Close, close, close.  Nothing bad happened.  Conor is fine and really suffered nothing more than being woken up during a good sleep.  The smell is out of the house, we suffered no damage there.  But close.  It feels like we were very close to something bad. 

10:00:02 AM     trackback [] Comments? []