Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Public Service Announcement

I learned the importance today of having and using a fire extinguisher.

(I'll get to that in a minute though!) So much for a lazy day! We did get to sleep in a bit I suppose though. Morgan and I spent the day with his sister Rosemary and her family. She and her husband Don have two little girls. They have a very nice house outside of the city so we got to spend the day in the "country." It was quite nice to get to spend time with them all.



After dinner I met up with the Irishman's other two sister. We were invited to their friends' house for dinner. Morgan's sisters and their friends are wonderful at getting dressed up and throwing nice dinner parties. The plates were set beautifully and dinner was fantastic.

We'd gone back to the dining room for our tea when June noticed a funny smell. She walked into the front room to discover the table was on fire. There had been a beautiful candle arrangement lit on a table in front of the window. The flames at that point were about three feet high. The room was filling with smoke.

One of the hosts did not skip a beat though. She grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and started to spray the fire. By this point the smoke was quite thick. She was able to put out the fire with the small fire extinguisher.

We opened the all the windows and doors and stood on the front porch for a while. I have no doubt that they were about 20 seconds from loosing the house. There were heavy drapes behind the table that would have easily caught fire had it gotten any bigger. It was truly frightening to imagine what could have been.

I know that all 5 of us there are now believers in fire extinguishers. I have done the training at work, but I had not really given it much thought until tonight. They really would have lost the house had it not been for the fire extinguisher and some quick thinking.

Do you have a fire extinguisher? Would you know how to use it if your house was at risk?

2 comments:

MN Mom said...

Wow that was scary. Thank goodness you are all fine. I have located my extinguisher and Shannon's now I will read how to use them! Thanks. See you soon, safe travel.

Agate Lake Girl said...

I have one, but again will have to make sure I don't have to spend countless minutes reading the directions. I'll peruse those again. Thank goodness you guys got to it in time.