Had a fire yesterday, almost burnt down the house.

PEC

We had a little excitement yesterday. I was doing some rewiring in the garage. I was pulling out the old wires to replace with new. I old wire was under sized for the breaker and could have been a fire hazard. I turned off the breakers to the outlets that I was rewiring, disconnected the wires from the breaker and was pulling them out of the panel, when the bare ground wire hit the power buss, this instantly melted the wire and plastic insulation, starting a fire in the wall. I ran out to the panel and turned off the main, smoke was coming out of the panel. I ran back into the garage and fire was coming out of the hole in the wall, where the outlet used to be. I ran in to the house and grabbed a fire extinguisher, yelling to Barbara to call 911, 6:29 PM. I returned to the garage and emptied the fire extinguisher into the hole in the wall. When I finish with the fire extinguisher and the fire appeared to be out 6:32 PM. I asked Barbara to call 911 back and tell them that the fire was out. We argued for a couple minutes, until I convinced her that it was no longer an emergency and she call them back to tell them that the fire was out 6:35 PM. I fire department showed up at 6:42 PM. The things that I learned from this are, 1. Never pull wires to or from the panel with the main breaker on. 2. If you have VOIP have a UPS on your cable/dsl modem and router, I did and had just replaced the batteries last week, if I didn't Barbara couldn't have called 911, I would have had to and I was busy putting out the fire. 3. Replace the batteries in all smoke alarms, the two in the area did not go off. 4. Have at least 1 fire extinguisher on each floor, I am buying more today. 5. You can't depend on the fire department to put out a fire, 13 minutes to show, (I am about 1.5 miles from the closest fire station.) If I hadn't put out the fire, I would be homeless today, they should have been there before we called to tell them to tell them the fire was out (6 minutes). I the fight of flight, I chose the fight, kept a cool head and saved the house. The new project for this weekend is to open up the wall and see how much damage the fire did. Thanks for listening, have a good day and be safe. Philip

RollerDave

Holy Cow Phil!

I'm awfully glad you kept your head, and thus, the home in which it resides.

I think I'll check batteries today.

Roller (of the 'we keep a cel on us at all times' armed sheep class)

What-A-Coincidence

DAM! I was just a your palace o great Hussein ... glad it didn't burn down.

unique1

Crazy man. Glad it wasn't worse.

misanthropic

Thats awful, at first I thought maybe this was going to be a 4th of July BBQ gone wrong. Hopefully there wasn't too much electrical damage done.

restrangled

PEC!!!!!!!!!

Glad you are still with us. One thing I learned from my Dad many years ago, always shut off the power that connects you to the street when running new wires or working with electrical fixtures involving water. Even with all circuit breakers in the off position electricity is still flowing to the house.

I've installed a pool pump (220) and underwater lights in a pool. Very scary business!

Again, I am so glad you are here with us to tell the story.

r.