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Yesterday morning I was awoken just before 6:00 by my daughter yelling the house was on fire... She had been in her room upstairs with a window open and smoke started coming in the window. She got up and looked outside, and saw flames at the back of the house. As we were bailing out the front door, we heard the windows in the back breaking as the fire came in... I went around back to look, and saw several bags of yard clippings we had piled up on fire, and burning the back of the house. The fire was intruding into the house, and as I was watching started to burn out the windows of the side door from the inside out. That was when we GTFO and went out front to signal the responders...
They got it out pretty quickly, but the damage to the laundry room, rear bedroom(used for storage) and the kitchen is extensive, with smoke damage throughout the house. The plastic window blinds in every room including my bedroom are melted, even though the fire was contained to the back of the house. It's quite a mess...
Once we got the house released back to us, we spent all day cleaning up and trying to salvage what we could. I had a bunch of 3S parts in that storage room. most of which I can save but the almost two complete interiors I had in there took a beating.... All the appliances in the laundry room and kitchen are toast. There was minimal damage upstairs, just a few holes in the back walls from the FD fishing for hot spots. We're hoping we can get the upstairs livable quickly and get the power back on, then I'll just temporarily move upstairs with my daughter while the downstairs gets gutted and repaired.
My real fear, is that once we get the initial demo done, and they start looking at how to repair an almost 100 year old house that's been added onto several times, most over 50 years ago with questionable relevance to modern code, the engineer will just say "nope, tear it down..."
Anyway, I'll get pics posted when I get one of my own computers back up and running. It's quite a sight. Pretty depressing to see. I'm just really glad it wasn't worse... If my daughter hadn't caught on before it actually got in the house, as fast as it was moving, someone could have gotten hurt, and I'm sure the house would have been destroyed.
So what happened you ask...? We had been slowly working on chopping down my huge overgrown back yard, as it had gotten out of control in the wet spring, and having tall grass in a hot summer is a fire hazard right...? We had bagged up most of the clippings, and stacked them out of the way of our work area. (which happened to be next to the house) My Son in Law was going to haul it all off on Tuesday as that was his next day off (something I hardly ever get, so he was going to handle it for me) Apparently the clippings started to compost in the hot sun, and self ignited...
I'm just glad everyone is ok... and so far it looks like the insurance is going to take care of us pretty fairly. So I can't complain too much... I just wish I wouldn't have been enough of a dumbass to pile those bags in that location... It would have been much nicer to learn that lesson by having to put out an unwanted bonfire in the middle of the yard rather than possibly losing my house...
Anyway, I'm fine, my daughter and her husband are fine, and all the pets are fine... Just thought I'd let everyone know what was going on, and why my time posting here might be a bit limited for awhile... Because I'm such a post whore on a regular day... LOL
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Originally Posted by Echo419
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