Happy Mothers day honey-Grab the fire extinguisher NOW!!!!

[Boxerfan]

As my wife was getting ready for work I heard a loud sizzle popp noise in the living room. I went in & there was electrical sparks flying & smoke starting to rise-I looked behind the fish tank where it was emanating from & FIRE!.

Of course I had moved the fire extinguisher a foot above where it had been. I had cleaned up the area & wall mounted. I forgot to mention it however. She couldn't find it.

I ran in the kitchen & went to the fuse panel. I threw every house fuse Off not knowing the specific fuse for the outlet on fire. I then found the extinguisher. Is it still on fire? Oh yeah she replied.

I dumped the contents of the dry powder extinguisher & the fire was out. Pulling apart the charred remains of a power strip I found it had a ground delete adaptor from over 20 years ago at our old house. And the item that fried it was a rather old air pump. After at least a decade of service it just shorted internally.

The power strip should have had a fuse internally but I know it didn't work. Was it due to the fact it was not grounded I don't know.

I do know we are damn lucky we were home-and awake when it happened. It could have been much much worse.

I have a lightly scarred piece of carpet as the only damage to the house. The smell is mostly dissipated after a day of full fan. I have ordered a new extinguisher & 10 pack of Febreze from Amazon. Cleanup was a pain but we have a new shop vac with a high capacity filter-clogged 3x in the process of cleaning up the bicarbonate powder.

My wife actually had a new pump just in case but we normally wait for a "it stopped" failure to replace it. So the fish got a air pump upgrade and we were about back to normal.

All the fish & household critters were fine.

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Lessons learned-

We need to have a yearly fire safety check / drill. Know where the fuse panel-water & power cut off and fire extinguishers are.
If you relocate a important safety item-like say a fire extinguisher-you need to tell everyone who lives there.

Don't burry extension chords/ power strips they need to be clean & checked every year. And they need actual safety fuse/ proper grounding. Items that have been working fine for years can go bad in a instant. That overloads the circuit & if not protected-bad things happen.


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We got lucky- have a happy Mothers Day & stay safe!

[underpants]

1. Very glad everything was mostly fine

Whew!

[Rhiannon12866]

2. Including the poor fishies!

[calimary]

3. WOW! You WERE lucky!

[wendyb-NC]

4. Glad you're all safe

That is so scary. Thanks, for bringing this up, and sharing your experience. I will check the power strips that are in use at my house. They are pushing 8 years. I am going to follow your advice.

[Boxerfan]

5. It happened very suddenly....

I had been in the room an while earlier-nothing odd, no smell etc.

My wife had fed the fish as she always does just before work about 5 minutes before.

So in less than 5 minutes, the pump shorted-the power strip failed & melted-catching fully ablaze.

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Thanks for the replies-please take this seriously.

You are right-we were VERY lucky. I'm sure we would have lost all our animals and that would devastate us. We have insurance but what a ordeal that would have been.

The only reason I had a decent fire extinguisher is I saved it from a car being crushed at a wrecking yard I worked at long ago. I now know they are essential part of a household. It was very out of date but it saved me when I needed it. And like I said a new one is on the way.

Close-way too close....