As you all know Randy gave me the flu Thursday and I have been on my azz since,,,,,,,, until last night. As I was soaking in the tub regulating my fever when all of a sudden my wife starts beating on the door screaming that the attic is on fire. I flew out of the tub and grabbed some shorts, a fire extinguisher, and a flash light. When I opened the attic door – believe me when I say I did not need a flash light. I have never seen my attic so lit before – it was on fire. The fire was about 30 yards from the attic door and the smoke was thick. I knew I had one shot at this. I held my breath and low crawled (low ceilings) close enough to where I knew the dry chemical would hit it. On the way there I scraped nails from the roof on my head, smacked my head on a cross beam and scratched the hell out of my back on another cross beam. I pulled the pin and started spraying until the bottle was just about out and then the flames were out. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and inhaled some smoke, then gagged and puked while retreating for the exit. At this point I wondered if I should have even attempted to put this out. Well after the gagging and eye burns were over I knew that the danger was far from over, so I got a huge fan and had it blowing out of the attic – pulling the smoke out. It actually cleared the smoke out quickly – maybe because of the ridge vent in the roof - and I went straight back in there to pull out the smoldering pink insulation – which was what was on fire. After that was all cleared and safe from restarting – I was gagging and choking pretty badly – because when I started ripping the insulation back – all the dry chemical was getting stirred up in the air along with fiber glass dust and I was just trying not to breath it but couldn’t help it. I am going get checked out again in the morning because I have been profusely coughing all day - along with running a mild fever.
This was definitely an eye opener for all of us at home. My 9 year old daughter was in the tub at the time and said the light went out then came back on slightly – well the slightly was the fire and the light going out was the breaker tripping. From what I can tell from the picture, it appears that the wires coming out of the bathroom heater shorted then caught my pink insulation on fire. This baffles me, because I thought fiber glass does not burn - BS. The pink insulation is not in the picture because I ripped it out – but it was packed against the light / vent / heater assembly pretty tightly – however the next install will have at least 10 inches free all around. I don’t know why this happened all of a sudden because I installed this heater six years ago? I will definitely bring it for our next safety meeting. I will eventually put a fire alarm up in the attic just in case.
…and that’s one to grow on!
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