Fire Safety 101

Fire is NOT something to joke about, which is why I am happy to report we survived our first chimney fire on Monday evening.

Apparently the powers that be decided that our life in the cabin was getting a little too boring. I beg to differ, but so be it. And I’d like to say we kept a cool demeanor through the chimney fire, but it was more like organized chaos.

Let story time begin.Deal started our nightly fire in the wood-burning stove around 5, as he has every night since we’ve been at the cabin. Then he jumped on the phone with an old friend.
At this same time, I was cooking dinner (BBQ spare ribs in the crock pot, pasta salad and green beans, if you must know).

Then the smoke detector started beeping (loudly, of course) and the alarm system started yelling, “Fire, Fire, Fire.” I immediately shut off my green beans, wondering how they could have set off the alarm, grabbed a towel and started waving.

The obnoxious beeping and “fire, fire, fire” would not stop. I grabbed a larger towel and said, “can you get off the phone, please?” because my frantic waving was not doing much.

Deal turned on the fans and went downstairs to see if anything was going on. Nothing. He thought maybe the smoke was coming from the wood-burning stove, so he concentrated on that. Then he went outside to see if anything was going on and that’s when he noticed the flames shooting out the chimney.

Enter chaos.

“Call 911. Where’s my phone? What’s the address here? Get the pets out!”

I got the dog out no problem, but I’m afraid there was a little tail pulling with the cat. Meanwhile, Deal is on the phone with the 911 lady who is yelling at him, “get out now!” But we all got out safely and by the time the fire department (which includes half the town of Fairplay) arrived, the fire was out.
I waited in the car with the pets while the fire department cleared the scene (I always wanted to say that line). Turns out, there was just a buildup of creosote at the top of the chimney.

So we lived without the beloved wood stove for 2 blustery nights (seriously, winds got up to 50 mph). This morning, we got the chimney cleaned (on the instruction of DocDoc & her family … remember, as much as we love this cabin, it is not ours).

We’ve had a fire going all night and so far, so good.

Back to being boring. (Mr. McKinley, shield your eyes for this picture.)