posted
If only I were joking. Luckily everyone's fine, and there's no major damage, but it was a little scary.
So my roommate and I decide to go to the end of our block (maybe 200 yards away) and do some grocery shopping at the little market there. What I didn't know was, before we left she put some pop-tarts in the toaster. She figured they would be done by the time we got back.
We were gone for maybe five minutes. When we got back to the front door, she says "Hey, it looks like smoke is coming out of your window." I looked up and saw it myself, and I immediately burst into the house. The place was filled with smoke and the detectors were going off...how we didn't hear them from outside the house I don't know.
So we rush into the kitchen and the toaster is on fire. Thankfully there were some dish towels lying around, and I grabbed them and used them to beat down the fire and start smothering the flames. My roommate immediately went to the sink, and I had to scream at her to not get water, because the toaster was still plugged in.
Luckily the toaster was on a rolling counter, so I pulled it from the wall and we unplugged it. The side of the microwave is a little scorched but otherwise fine, and the wall behind the toaster has a few black marks but nothing major. There was no fire in the walls, and the only real mess was that the corner was covered in ashes from a few paper bags that caught on fire.
As for the toaster itself, it melted. Literally melted. Thank God we came home when we did. Five minutes later and I don't want to think what would have happened. Now the place still smells like smoke and melted plastic, but otherwise everything is back to normal. I called the landlords almost immediately after it happened and let them know that everything was fine. I think very soon we're going to chip in and get a fire extinguisher.
Sorry if that reads weird or detached, but I'm a little freaked out and just needed to write it down. I've never been a fire fighter before, heh.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Oh, dear. This is why you should keep a box of baking soda handy at all times in the kitchen, and not leave things cooking in anything other than a crockpot while you go out!
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Thanks ketchupqueen. There was baking soda handy in the fridge, but it didn't occur to me to use it. And yes, my roommate has learned her lesson the hard way.
Aspectre, that actually makes me feel a bit better. That's exactly what our fire looked like.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: (I'm not going to dobie this thread. I'm not, I'm not.
But I keep reading "kitchen" as "kitten." [Eek!] )
I had to click on this thread to make sure this one wasn't a dobie, because I could've sworn I saw a thread earlier with kitten in the title. I was seriously thinking the same thing as you.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Your kitchen wasn't on fire. Your toaster was on fire.
Thirty years ago, while I was five years old and living in Puerto Rico, my kitchen was completely consumed by a fire. It was actually quite a miracle that *only* the kitchen was completely and utterly destroyed. Might have to do something with my father fending off eight foot high flames with a garden hose.
My sister, father and I were in the house at the time; my mother had left something on the burner and went to work. When we came down the stairs, we could see flames across the cabinets through the kitchen door.
It's the only precise memory I have of my youth. Things like that tend to stick with you.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Ours was the basement and a dryer, no dad with a garden hose (he'd left for work already), but firefighters instead while my sister and I, in our pajamas, were in the car outside waiting for it to end.
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I'm so glad you're okay! Fires are my biggest fear. Living in an apartment, I can never be sure that my neighbors aren't doing really dumb things in their kitchens or with their wiring.
Posts: 1006 | Registered: Jun 2006
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One of my first forays into cooking was homemade french fries. Lesson 1 was that it is better to have a deep frier for this. Lesson 2 was that the oil does not have to be super hot. Just hot will do. Lesson 3 was that getting all the water off the potatoes first before dropping them in the oil is not optional.
Lesson 4 was that I had surprisingly good reflexes. I didn't lose my eyebrows by some miracle.
Fortunately the kitchen had high ceilings. The fireball dissipated before hitting the ceiling and I didn't manage to burn anything except the fries.
While in retrospect rather funny, the memory makes me *very* careful in the kitchen now. I'm glad you're okay. Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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My biggest concern now is that the neighbors will hate us and my landlord will be upset. But whatever will be, will be.
Nighthawk, you are correct. It would have been more accurate for me to have said that there was a fire IN my kitchen.
I think it was the poptarts that were on fire, not the toaster...the toaster was the wax (having melted) and the poptarts the wick...so to speak.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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