kymom99
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 24, 2008
- Messages
- 6,205
I thought I would share what I experienced early this morning.
We awoke at 5:30 am to the sound of one of our smoke detectors going off. My husband yelled for me to get up. I didn’t even hear the thing. When I woke up I thought it was the weather alert and we had to go to the basement. It took a few seconds for my mind to register what was happening.
There was really no smoke that we could see and no fire but a strong sulphuric smell. My husband said get dressed and grab your purse. Then he said maybe grab the cat. The cat sleeps in the basement. I went down and there was no smell down there. The cat didn’t even wake up. I was caliing 911 as I was getting him in his crate. We went out of the house and pulled a car out of the garage. We moved it across the street and left it running in the neighbors driveway to keep the cat warm.
Three fire trucks and 2 police cars responded. It must have been a slow night. It took a while and a lot of questions to pinpoint the problem. The final verdict was that the motor on our very old fridge burned up.
I have been saying for a long time that I was going to buy a new fridge. But I hate spending money on that kind of stuff. And the thing worked so....
We are VERY fortunate that we only need to replace the fridge and we had to pitch out some old food to be able to fit everything in the downstairs fridge. There is a lingering odor but I imagine that will go away eventually. If we weren’t home our whole house would have gone up in flames. I shudder to think about it.
So maybe some of my DIS friends are in a similar situation with old appliances that are past the point of being safe. I know we are a frugal bunch but it’s not worth the risk keeping things around that pose a fire risk.
We awoke at 5:30 am to the sound of one of our smoke detectors going off. My husband yelled for me to get up. I didn’t even hear the thing. When I woke up I thought it was the weather alert and we had to go to the basement. It took a few seconds for my mind to register what was happening.
There was really no smoke that we could see and no fire but a strong sulphuric smell. My husband said get dressed and grab your purse. Then he said maybe grab the cat. The cat sleeps in the basement. I went down and there was no smell down there. The cat didn’t even wake up. I was caliing 911 as I was getting him in his crate. We went out of the house and pulled a car out of the garage. We moved it across the street and left it running in the neighbors driveway to keep the cat warm.
Three fire trucks and 2 police cars responded. It must have been a slow night. It took a while and a lot of questions to pinpoint the problem. The final verdict was that the motor on our very old fridge burned up.
I have been saying for a long time that I was going to buy a new fridge. But I hate spending money on that kind of stuff. And the thing worked so....
We are VERY fortunate that we only need to replace the fridge and we had to pitch out some old food to be able to fit everything in the downstairs fridge. There is a lingering odor but I imagine that will go away eventually. If we weren’t home our whole house would have gone up in flames. I shudder to think about it.
So maybe some of my DIS friends are in a similar situation with old appliances that are past the point of being safe. I know we are a frugal bunch but it’s not worth the risk keeping things around that pose a fire risk.