Marc Stegger's blog
FIRE at home!!
10:58 AM on Jan 01, 2007

Oh well, just had a very interesting New Years eve as the kitchen cought fire as my girlfriend and some other friends that were over to celebrate last night! Apparently some suger, butter vanilla thing was left unattended and without turning the heat completely off...... So around nine, all electricity suddenly went off. I get up and go out into the hall to hit the switch as I figure we may have to many things turned on. From there I can see FLAMES through a ceeling window from the hall to the kitchen. DAMN!
So we rush to the kitchen and see loads of flames eminating from the stove AND the compartments above. Imagine 2-3 feet flames and ton of smoke coming out.... The door was closed to the kitchen so that is why we did not smell anything before that.
Now, as the power goes off, so does our IP phone, so we have darkness, no normal phones, flames, smoke in an aparment in the middle of a building complex. Now, where are the cell phones??? Finally one is found and we got connection to the fire department, all while a friend and myself are battleing the smoke and desperatly throwing wet towels at the flames and afterwards as much water as possible to try and stop it.The fire is getting less it believe, but the smoke was not!! In the end, after a 1-2 minutes, my GF drags me out screaming desperatly to get out and we close the door and step outside the apartment and wait for the fire department who is here with 3 minutes from we made the call! Amazing!!!
It turns out we just got it turned off, but all 15 firemen are poking around, with hoses, oxygen masks, axes etc. And everyone is evacuated from the building of course.
So after delaing with the police and then the firemen, a small team comes to our house, 3 men strong and start taking down some of the worst damaged things in there and they also do the initial cleaning of the place. I still dont have any real clue to whom they are related? As they finish off after an hour or so, they report that another team is on the way to do some more thorough clean. And sure, another team shows up at 10 pm or so and cleans out almost the entire kitchen in 90 minutes. The apologies that they had to stop then, but they had other important assignment that evening (read more burned places to clean.....). I am astonish by that service. All this while we sat with our friends in the living room and had some soda WITHOUT alcohol!
So it seems some other people will be back tomorrow or the day after to do some additional cleaning, but I will go and start in 5 min right after this, and then we need to contact the insurance company etc... I just it to get out on the other side. Everything here smells a bit like it has been lightly smoked, like you get from sitting near a camp fire all evening.
Got be off to get started on getting things back together here again, I will post a picture of the kitchen later today I hope. From the report we got yesterday, it seems things could have turned out way more seriously then the fortunatly did.

After all this reading, if you got through it, I wish you all had a fantastic evening with lot less action then here and that you got safely into 2007!!!

Cheers and coughs,
Marc




Posted by Enis Dauti at 12:36 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #1

Good thing everything went well. One question though. Where were your fire extinguishers? In my building there's one per floor, and are maintained.

Posted by Jeff Stibling at 03:03 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #2

Wow, I am glad everybody is alright, a fire can be one of the most paralyzing things to watch un-fold, it leaves you helpless, scared and concerned for your loved ones and belongings...

Good luck with your clean-up.

How does the phone line go out with a fire? How does the power go out with a fire?

Posted by Scott Michaels at 03:10 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #3

your girlfriend is very intelligent. Ive got a mate whos an experienced firefighter, and hes told me many stories about people trying to fight the fire on their own, thinking they have it under control, but dieing through lack of oxygen without even realising the danger :-/

Glad everything is ok!

Posted by Bob Fay at 03:50 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #4

Man Marc, glad no one got hurt. All the other stuff is just an inconvenience as long as nobody was injured. It'll be ancient history before you know it. And like Enis, we have extinguishers installed right in our kitchen...that even gets us a discount on our homeowners insurance.

Posted by Marc Stegger at 04:05 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #5

Fire extinguishers are not mandatory here in Denmark, but it is going to be in my home from now on!!! We are going to have one in the flat, thats for sure.
The phone station uses electric power, and when the fire caught the electric installations, the entire "electrical thing" just shut off. Not my field of expertice, but other than the phone problems, it actually was what made us notice the fire in the first place, thank god!
Scott, you are absolute right, and when witnessing the kitchen the day after I was also a bit shocked. Should have left immediatly, but I was just hoping to save the apartment. If things would have went wrong and the firemen would have been 5-6-7 minutes to get here, it could really have gotten out of hand. But I should have left.

Now we just finished trying to clean up as much as possible here, and wash the walls down etc. hopefully the smell will vansih in the next couple of days :-)

Posted by Barry Hedrick at 05:27 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #6

Man o man Marc. I'm glad everyone is ok. Fires are devestating as my mother found out 15 years ago when the house we grew up in burned almost completely to the ground and everything in the house was lost including all personal records, family photos and all personals. The only luck involved was they were not home when it started but were driving up to the house and could see it engulfed in flames with the fire department already there. It turned out that someone had started it intentionally as the fire department found a gas can and a small steel cup by the house but of course nobody saw a thing and noone was ever convicted. So yes you are very lucky and your girl was smart to get you the hell outta there because it onlt takes 1 breath of the bad gasses burning and your dead!

I was told were we live it will take a minimum of 22 min. for the fire dept. to respond so I do have extinguishers, smoke detectors (which are now mandatory) and even have 400' of fire hose and nozzle ready to go. I'm about 100' from the fire plug so I am as ready as I can be.

Barry

Posted by Joe DiPino at 06:21 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #7

sheesh marc...sorry to hear that. hang in there and best wishes for the new year.

Posted by Steve Smith at 06:33 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #8

Holy Happy New Year Batman!!!!

SO SO SO glad everyone managed to escape with no injury's!

I mean I have heard of bringing in the new year with a bang, but DANG!

Glad you and Ditte are OK!

Posted by Johan Nilsson at 08:39 PM on Jan 01, 2007
 Comment #9

OK, next time less moonshine cooking and more smorrebrod. :P

Glad no one got hurt.

Posted by Tracy Nolte at 12:48 AM on Jan 02, 2007
 Comment #10

Dear god...so glad it wasn't more serious and you both are alright. Might be nice to give the firemen a bit of a suprise or something (cookies, homemade Lasagne, etc...) an older buddy of mine is a Captain here in San Antonio and those guys really risk life and limb but are often underappreciated when things are normal.

best wishes for a happy new year and hope things get cleaned up soon for you.

mogwai


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