Where are the fire extinguishers?

I haven’t been blogging in a while. Last post was last year. This is due to this and that… but mostly cuz I just didn’t feel like blogging recently.

Until now – and what a way to break this blog dry-spell: There’s been a fire in our home… and there were casualties.

What’s that smell?

I was in my room watching/surfing… when there was this smell of burnt something. Now if you’ve seen my room, you’d understand that I’m very paranoid of that smell, since it may come from any of the myriad of electronics I have installed.

Since I had my share of electronics overheating on me (subwoofers, monitors, motherboards), I did what I would usually do, check where the smell came from so I know which gadgets I should shut down to prevent the problem from spreading.

I discovered that everything in my room was fine. But as long as I didn’t know what the source of the smell was, I wouldn’t be able to calm down. I went out of my room, then I saw smoke coming from my sister’s dark and empty room – but there was a dim light emanating from within.

That tone of color [of light] could only be made by two things: lamps with a dimmer setting to low (which only I, and the dining area had)… or a fire. As I opened the door, I found out it was the latter.

Fire!

The funny thing was I suddenly remembered the show “Everybody Loves Raymond” Wherein there was a fire, and he tried killing it with a hose that was too short. His wife eventually pulled out the fire extinguisher.

THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER! Where the hell is it!? I woke up my mom to ask her where it was. Well actually, I shouted “MOM, GET UP! THERE’S A FIRE! WHERE’S THE EXTINGUISHER!” To which she screamed WE DON’T HAVE ONE!

This is where near-panic ensued… she ran to the room and tried to kill the fire with the usual smother-with-blanket method. I on the other hand was running for the dispenser, hoping to get the water-filled tank – which was empty!

I ended up going to the kitchen and filled up the first things I saw that could hold water… some small bowls hahahahaha. As I went to the room, I suddenly remembered the scene in Friends, where Ross tried to use a glass of water to kill the fire which had engulfed Pheobe’s dollhouse.

Mom had managed to kill most of the fire with the other method, so I doused the remaining flames with the water I had gathered. Simply put, the fire was extinguished.

For good measure I checked out the roof access hatch to see if the wiring above us had caught fire… cuz if it did, we’d better start packing some stuff… or just run the hell out of the place there and then. Fortunately, there was no sign of stray fires. So after running around a couple more times around making sure everything was in order – we concluded that the fire was over.

We shall miss you

I mentioned casualties… mostly CDs/VCDs and the desk itself… not to mention the melted diffuser panels for the florescent lights.

The computer, and monitor (which were in the same area) weren’t affected, which was a very good thing. So nothing expensive was burnt… save for her wireless keyboard.

*Alas! It served us well.*

The silver lining

All in all, it was a lucky break, I was awake to smell it. The fire wasn’t too big to kill, no important stuff was destroyed. At least no stuff Pia considered important say like… her shoes for example hehehe. I’m also glad that it wasn’t my room that caught fire… I cant imagine what I’d try to save first. The PC? the Camera? The Powerbook? My microphones?

We believe it started with the lights. Considering the bulb was still intact, we’re guessing it was a short in the wiring. It couldn’t be anything else really since even the PC was off when the fire started.

Lesson to be learned

Aside from turning off everything when you leave (which I can’t do either, as far as my PCs are concerned), it would save you a lot of headache if you had a fire extinguisher that was easily accessible.