It’s a God Thing

I’m going to add a new category called that I think. It comes up often enough.

I almost burnt the house down this morning.

We were cooking breakfast for once instead of cereal. The pan was sitting on the burner with grease in the bottom and the burner was on, I thought, “Hey, I’ll go ahead and add the hash browns.” I stood the child on the floor at my feet in her usual spot and dumped the frozen chunk of hash brown into the pan. I sometimes forget that on our ancient stove that particular burner only has two settings, off and high.

Grease began to splatter violently and I was afraid it would burn the child so I picked the pan up. As I lifted it off of the stove it burst into flames. Not little controllable flames but huge ferocious flames. I had half a second to ponder lids and baking soda before the fact that the flames were licking up the cabinets and across the ceiling distracted me. We have good tall ceilings, that was a lot of fire. I kept a hold of the pan and stepped back into the center of the room trying to get away from all that wood all the time screaming frantically for my husband. The flames settled down a bit with distance from the heat but the were still tickling the underbelly of the ceiling fan. I was afraid they would catch the coating of dust on the never used thing on fire. I was afraid to take a step because I knew the child was down there somewhere, I was to preoccupied to look to see where, and there is no way out that doesn’t involve steps.

I know clear to my bones that the way to put out a grease fire is to put the lid on and/or smother it with baking soda. I have seen the Myth Busters episode where they see what happens if you poor water onto flaming grease. Honestly though it is easier said than done. When on the stove it was trying to catch the cabinets on fire and standing there holding the pan it was impossible to do anything. So I screamed for my husband, I don’t know what I thought he was going to do. Really it all happened so fast there was hardly time to do anything.

My gallant husband must have started running from the other end of our, very small, house as soon as he heard me the first time. after it was over I saw where he dropped his phone as he came, it laid there in the middle of the floor. He rushed into the kitchen and snatched the flaming pan from my hands.

And it went out.

Just like that, he saved the day. The only reminder of our near disaster is a swirl of smoke stain way above my head on the white cabinet.

At about 3:55 looks just like our fire