Forget the noises; there’s a fire in the wall!

26Dec07

Our house sort of, kind of started on fire today.

Now that the holiday season has arrived and passed, it is time to clean up the mess that it undoubtedly leaves behind. For my mom, this means she must clean the oven.

This morning, barely awake from a long night’s sleep, I hear my mom shuffle to the stairs and yell, “(my dad), I just called the fire department; I think there’s a fire in the wall!”

She did not worry that I was upstairs, perhaps still in bed and sleeping soundly.

My father and I meet at the stairs and yell, “What?”

She responds, “I don’t know what happened. I was cleaning the oven and I heard a “pop.” I think there is a fire in the wall.” The smoke alarm had already gone off previously, but we figured that was due to the inordinate amount of smoke from the caked-on potatoes within the oven.

I walk over to the oven and turn the light on. I see no fire, so I try to open the oven. The “lock” light was on, but I was still able to open the oven. My mom was in utter shock, “It says locked!”

My father says, “They’re COMING! I better get the dog” and grabs him and runs him upstairs. In most families, if there is a risk of fire, it is usually suggested that you remove yourself from the building. In my family, however, we all gather around where we believe the fire is, lock our animals on the second floor, and ponder.

My dad feels the wall upstairs and yells, “I don’t feel any heat!” He grabs a screwdriver and takes off the intercom cover in order to look into the wall: there was no fire in that wall.

He runs upstairs to take the screwdriver up there, because he did not know what the firefighters were going to do when they arrived. We all expected them to bring in massive axes and start hammering away at our walls, even though we had already determined there was no fire. My mom picks up the phone and asks if she should call them back. We did not know the number and I told her it would not be a good idea to just call 911 back. My dad pipes in, “Well, they’re already on their way, so they might as well come.”

I walk outside and see the fire chief coming down the street. He was soon followed by an ambulance, a firetruck, and a police officer, as well as some other personnel. Nevermind the response time; it had already been a good 7 minutes. If it is true that a fire doubles every second, our entire house would be engulfed.

I wait until they gather and begin coming up to the door and I yell,“It’s OK! There is no fire. IT’S THE EGGNOG! SHE HAD TOO MUCH EGGNOG.”

The fire chief enters and asks what happened. They all come to the oven and look around, ensuring we had some doors open to allow the smoke to dissipate. No one wants to suffer smoke inhalation from potato left-overs.

They, too, quickly determined there was no fire. They tell us it was better to be safe than sorry.

My mom offered them a cookie, but they declined. My mom told them what we’d had for dinner last night and one of the firemen said, “And NOW you call us,” and they all walked out the door.

I may call them back tomorrow, because that was exciting, albeit rather embarrassing. And, tomorrow, I may ask them to investigate the noises in my wall. That’s their job, right?

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Tags: chief, christmas, cleaning, embarrassing, embarrassment, fire, fire chief, Humor, humour, oven