This past Saturday started out pretty normal, as Saturdays go. Got up, made coffee, shuffled around the kitchen cleaning up this and that. My wife went to yoga and hit the road for a day trip to visit friends - “Be back tonight.” My girls asked if they could go play at a neighbor’s house…which lasted for all of 3 minutes, and then turned into them bringing the neighbor kid back over here to play. No big deal - living room forts and playing with slime and eating mac ‘n’ cheese, etc.
Somewhere along the way this happened:
That is a fire truck parked two doors down extending its ladder up to my house’s roof.
…but I may have skipped a couple of bits.
While the kids were keeping themselves occupied I figured I’d get some laundry done. I hauled the baskets down, threw in the first load, and…hmm. What’ s that smell?
I went back up to check on the kids - “Girls, do you have enough mac ‘n’ cheese?” Huh. No smell up here. Back in the basement, definitely an odor. Smells like…smoke? I hadn’t run the dryer yet, so it’s not that. Panel looks fine (and it doesn’t smell electrical, anyway.) Maybe the furnace? No obvious smoke there, and it’s cool to the touch…hrm.
My house was built in 1923. It has a little room that we believe was likely once a room for coal storage, and that has since been converted into a room for bullshit storage - Christmas decorations, a couple of leftover cabinets from a past kitchen remodel, an old window AC unit. I hadn’t even opened the door to that room since…well…last Christmas, but while I’m looking around I may as well check it out. I pull open the door…and the entire room is filled with a stinging haze of smoke.
Okay. We have strong signal, so now we’re in Incident Response Mode.
Triage: I poked around for maybe a minute or two - nothing obviously on fire or hot to the touch, nothing I can drench in any kind of fire retardant to stop the burning. No immediate mitigation steps to be taken w/rt whatever might be causing the smoke itself.
Next step: risk mitigation; specifically, getting the 3 babbies playing upstairs out of my house (preferably without inciting panic). I ask them to go back over to the neighbor’s house to play for a bit, then call the neighbor to ask him to please keep them over there until I call the all-clear.
Comms and expectation setting: Commence 20 Questions from the neighbor. “How bad is it? Where’s it coming from? What do you think it could be?” Dude. Thank you for taking the kids, I will gladly answer all of these questions in, say, a half hour or so. Right now I am hanging up the phone and calling the fire department.
Escalation: Call in the professionals. The fire department rolls up not 30 seconds after I called, I shit you not. …and man, they brought Everyone - 3 trucks, maybe a dozen or a dozen-and-a-half dudes in full gear, The Works. Totally professional and no-nonsense. “What do we have here? Show me where it is. Is anyone else in the house?” …and of course lots of beeps and chirps and walkie-talkie chatter.
More Comms: This was mostly texting my wife, explaining that the kids were okay (and out of the house), and that at present things were decidedly tense but that it was being Dealt With. …and also, replying to the ensuing text storm from every neighbor within about 4 houses with similar messaging. (We caused quite a buzz…)
Troubleshooting: 45 minutes of all these fellers traipsing around my entire house scanning walls with thermal imagers and poking at crawlspaces and things (note that the smoke was in the basement, and the pic is them going to my roof). The smoke seems to be dissipating of its own accord*…and not* one of them has the faintest idea what might have caused it.
So. They mounted up and rolled out, “We’ll swing back by in a couple of hours just to check up, give us a call back if she burns down before then, eh?”
Not exactly the “closure” I was hoping for, but these dudes were decidedly thorough and I’ve seen enough incidents self-resolve without understanding cause that I kind of Get It.
Post-Incident Actions: I called the neighbor back and let him know he could send the kids home, and apologized for being a bit intense on the phone earlier. “No worries, you seemed pretty calm to me.” (lol I assure you that I was freaking the fuck out at the time, buddy.) I aired out the house to get rid of the few remaining whisps of smoke…and proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening going back down to the basement on about a 20-minute cadence (just to, y’know, make sure the fucking thing wasn’t on fire). I even considered setting up a little chair and a beer fridge down there, just a “this is my life now” sort o’ fing.
I didn’t hold a postmortem, per se - I’m not sure having one with a single attendee is really useful - but I did reflect a bit on how the thing played out. Getting the kids out first? Definitely the right first step, imo. But maybe I should’ve called the fire department before calling the neighbor? Maybe out of an abundance of caution I should’ve just flooded that room with the garden hose? Maybe I should’ve taken a swing at the Young Adonis who made the joke about “give us a call back…”? (Nah. Strapping lad, had a good 6 inches and 50 pounds on me…and he was too beautiful to stay mad at for long, anyway.) Maybe I should’ve started the conversation with my wife with a bit of an intro explanation rather than leading with a picture of a fire truck? Other than that latter one (lol Cliff, sometimes you’re a real fucking moron) I think my overall response was about as sound and efficient as it could’ve been.