Fire in the House

annadrose · #1 (**permalink**) 12-27-2011, 11:31 AM

Last night I was cooking and I smelled something burning so I turned the burner off thinking something had gotten on it and moved the pan to another burner. When this happens usually whatever it is burns off and that's it.
My husband came in from the neighbor's and was opening windows and setting up a fan because it was so smelly, kind of like plastic burning.
We settled in bed to watch Lucky Number Slevin ( a really good movie by the way) and my husband got up to let the dogs out. He said it's kind of weird how the laundry room stinks so bad and I said it seems like the smell is worse so we looked around and the dryer was really hot. We opened it and everything inside was literally burnt black. I pulled some out and put it in a hamper and it burst into flames. DH used the fire extinguisher and I called 9 1 1.
The fire dept here is volunteer so we had to wait for a good 10 to 15 minutes. They came in and carried the dryer outside and pulled the clothes out and hosed them down with our garden hose.
After they looked they said a towel had become stuck between the drum and the wall of the dryer causing the drum to stop turning and the coils remained hot thus causing everything to catch on fire. At first they assumed it was a lint fire as those are common however we are very careful about the hose from the dryer being cleaned often.
I'm still kind of tripping as both of us and the dogs could have died if we had gone to sleep or we could have lost everything.
Once again I avoid tragedy and possible death due to the grace of God.