In the event of a fire, is your family ready? Mine wasn't.
Today, I was practicing piano, my brother was upstairs, and my mom was roasting peanuts. She got a phone call from a family friend, and since I was playing piano, she went outside to talk to said friend. The neighbors were having a barbecue, so I didn't notice the telltale sign of fire -- smoke. It wasn't until an orange light illuminated the dining room, that I suspected something was wrong. I went to the kitchen to investigate, and what do you know?
There it was. A fire that started from the stove, and licked the top of the kitchen ceiling. You can probably figure out what my expression was...
"HOLY FU*#. MOOOOOOMMMM. CHARLLIEEEE. FIREEEEEEEEE. DROP, DUCK AND ROLL!"
Adrenaline was rushing through my veins, and I didn't even bother correcting myself (it's actually stop, drop, and roll).
My brother responded with an irritated "What?" until I said "FIREEEEEEE." He thundered down the stairs and immediately started looking for the fire extinguisher. My mom came dashing out from the garage and ran to the stove, flipping the burning pot onto the kitchen floor and then put another pot on top of it to try and stop the flames. In the mean time, my brother and I were desperately searching for our fire extinguisher. We went to try and find it in the garage, but to no avail. Eventually, my mom found it behind the microwave, in a remote corner of our kitchen, but by then, the fire was already out.
Black smoke was creeping around on the ceiling, and my mom instructed my brother and I to open all the windows in our house. After that, we inspected the damage that had been caused by the fire. The cabinet above our stove was blackened, as was the wall next to the stove. On the ceiling, the light was burnt a little, but all-in-all, there wasn't any devastating damage. No one was harmed, and nothing valuable was destroyed (besides our family dignity).
This was really a time bomb, waiting to explode. Our fire alarm had ran out of batteries about five-years ago, and no one had bothered to put new batteries in. Our fire extinguisher was hidden in a remote place, inaccessible in the event of an even larger fire. Let this be a learning experience for all of us. No matter how careful you usually are, it's human nature to mess up sometimes.
In the event of a fire, be prepared.
- Never leave the stove unattended.
- Make sure your fire alarm works every month by testing it to make sure the batteries aren't dead.
- Make sure your fire extinguisher is in a place that is easily accessible when you need it.
- Make sure you know how to use the fire extinguisher. XD
Page 1 of 1 pages
Permalink