~THE CAT DIED, BUT NINE LIVES WERE SAVED~

~"I DON'T SMOKE IN BED"~
~The lady on the fire phone sounded very intoxicated and excited,
she was both, and very lucky to be alive. She has awaken from the
heat around her, coughing from the thick smoke and gases comming
up from the smoldering mattress she lay on.~
~It was only about 11 A.M. as we arrived on the scene, but she
was stumbling and staggering around the front yard. She reaked of
alcohol and in her slurred voice kept repeating, "I don't smoke
in bed", "I don't smoke in bed", "I was taking a nap on top of my
bed".~
~The firefighters entered the smoking house with a hose line to
extinguish the smoldering bed. Soon a call came from within the
house, "man down, we need some help." Several men with airmasks
on
ran to their aid and came out carrying Danny who was gasping for
fresh air, he was give oxygen and transported to the nearby
hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation, fires biggest
killer.~
~The inside of the house was a mess, wine bottles, glasses, and
cigarette butts all over. No damage could be seen that was caused
by flames, only smoke damage thruout the house, this should have
been a fatality fire by all reason.~
~The bedroom was really a mess, how could human beings live this
way? I've seen cleaner chicken coops. Dirty cloths were in piles
all over, it was hard to walk without stumbling over them. The
empty wine bottles had not been taken out for weeks or this woman
had a drinking problem. She had came very close to ending it, as
well as all her other problems.~
~It was surprising to see the double bed was made, it was still
smoldering but it had not burned like a cigarette caused fire and
there wasn't a baseboard heater or space heater near the bed. It
was then that I noticed the electric cord and thermostat control
for the electric blanket, and the telltale hair thin curly wires
in the smoldering remains on top of the bed.~
~I opened up the unburned thermostat control and found the
electric contact points(what you hear clicking off and on)fused
together, the colors on the brass containing the contact points
were the typical rainbow of black, purple, red, orange and yellow
caused by the heat of the "fusing".~
~When I interviewed the woman as to what she had been doing prior
to the fire she said, "I was tired so I layed down on top of my
bed to take a nap and when I woke up it was so hot and smokey and
the blanket was was smoldering all around me." I asked her if the
electric blanket was turned on and she said, "I never turn it
off, should I ?." This was the first of a long series of electric
blanket fires. Had the others been "cause undetermined" as we so
often read in the newspapers and put down on our reports?~
~FIRE AT THE FOOT OF THE BED~
~The Seattle Sonics were playing basketball on TV in the fire
station. The question on everyone's mind was, "Will they be going
to the playoff's?". Just then the fire bell rang and automaticly
we all jumped to our feet, Carl's coffee cup sailed across the
floor from the arm of his chair. The comments began as we raced
to "bunker-up" and mount the trucks, "Why can't people have fires
after the game?, "I hope it's only a false alarm so we can get
back to the game", and "Why do most of the fires have to be at
night"?
~The caller had said her bed was on fire, everybody was out of
the house, and someone would meet us at the street to direct us
to the house. The small house was located at the end of a long
dirt road, it would have been a hard one to find unless the sky
had been lit up by flames. It was a good thing they had the
sense to send someone out to direct us in or we would never hear
the end of it.~
~"Good" I thought as we pulled up in front of the house, "they
closed the doors as they left the house, otherwise the in rushing
fresh air would have fed the fire and it would have been totally
involved in fire." Get on the airmasks and lay a line" was
ordered as we dismounted the trucks.~
~The fire had been confined to the foot of the double bed in the
master bedroom, there was a lot of heavy smoke but no flames. It
did not appear as a cigarette caused fire and there was no other
source of ignition near the bed. No ashtrays were in the bedroom
or any other room in the house.~
~It was then when I seen the thermostat control head on the
nightstand, it was turned on high, but the electric blanket was
not on fire, only the foot of the bed. Down there I found the
hair thin coiled heating element wires, part of the blanket
containing them had been tucked in there. Could it really be?.~
~I took the thermostat control head apart and the contact points
were "fused" together and those same beautiful rainbow colors
were on the brass containing the contact points. Yes, it was
another "over heated" electric blanket!."~
~In interviewing the lady about the blanket she said, "this was
the first time I tucked in the blanket because it was always cold
at my feet and the blanket is always falling off the bed." She
also said she turns on the blanket control at 7 P.M. so the bed
will be warm when she goes to bed.~
~She was lucky she had not gone to bed sooner, and had the the
carbon monoxide from the slow smoldering mattress overcome and
take the lives of her and her three small children(no smoke
detectors then) We seem to learn something new about fire every
so often, but most of the time it is after lives are lost.~
~REMEMBER THAT BEAUTIFUL BEDSPREAD?~
~The couple had just returned from work at The Boeing Company,
they both worked the same shift and at the same plant so they
shared a ride with three others in the same neighborhood. They
seen red lights flashing in front of their home at the same time.
The husband commented to his wife, "Looks like someone had a
fire", then he seen the firefighters comming out of their front
door with a smoldering mattress.~
~It had been a neatly kept house, with the best of furniture, I
guess you can afford it with two people in the house workng. But
it was a real mess now, heat, smoke, and soot can really do a lot
of damage. The walls and ceiling were covered with black soot and
orange stains as well as the drapes, curtins, towles and
furniture. If you have not seen a house after a smoldering fire,
you have not seen a black sink and bathtub, the heat bakes the
smoke on all glass items inside the house. This will really cost
the Insurance Company (you and me). And all because of what?~
~It was not hard to find the point of origin of the fire as it
was all centered in the bedroom. Now to find the cause. The
smoldering fire started on tom of the bed, burnt pieces of
bedspread and blankets lay on the floor on both sides of the bed.
It was not a deep seated burn like a cigarette causes, it had
smoldered across the surface equally. The drapes being at the
highest point where the superheated gasses form also had ignited
and dropped down on the floor under the windows, smoldered and
whent out. This also would have been a fatal fire, had anyone
been sleeping in the house without smoke detectors.~
~Carefully I began removing debris from on top of the mattress,
there I found the tiny hair thin curly wires going up and down
from the top to the bottom on the mattress. Another electric
blanket had turned into a hotplate! I found the thermostat
control head and pried open the melted plastic cover. Again I
found the contact points fused together and the same identical
rainbow color pattern. What was causing this?~
~I had to wait some time for the homeowner's wife to calm down
before I could ask her any questions. It was a great shock to
come home and find all the you had worked and saved for
destroyed. But it will happen again and again as long as there
are men, women and children, fuel, oxygen and heat.~
~It was the first thing the woman said to her husband that lit up
the light in my head. "Remember that beautiful bedspread" she
said. I asked her if the bedspread had been over the electric
blanket, and had she left the blanket heat turned on?. "Yes", she
said, "I always make the bed befor we go to work and just this
morning I told my husband I had forgot to turn off the electric
blanket."~
~Was I getting closer to the answer.? So many things are so
common in these bed fires with electric blankets.~
~"I SHOULD HAVE MADE THE BED"~
~A few days later I learned more about the cause of bed fires
involving electric blankets, but this time a life was just about
lost. It was getting ate, almost too late.~
~It was almost noon when the caller yelled into the fir phone,
"save him, please save him, he's going to burn up." It's really
hard to get the needed information from a person reporting a
fire, quite often they hang up the phone before they give the
dispatcher the address. Then they get mad because the fire trucks
never get there, and all we can do is wait for another call. This
time we got the address.~
~The firefighters were about six blocks away "drilling", that is
practicing laying a hose from a fire hydrant down the street to
to supply another truck with water. Firefighters do not sit in
the station all day drinking coffee and watching TV as most
people think. The call came over the radios from the dispatcher,
they left the hose laying in the street and proceeded to the
fire. Only a few minutes earlier Wayne had commented, "I think I
smell a mattress burning", and Bert had told him, "We have been
fighting so many bed fires, now you think you smell them." Wayne
was right.~
~We could see him before we got to the house, the man was slumped
over the window sill on the upper floor, smoke and fire gasses
were rushing out the window around him. Flames could be seen thru
the window on the floor below him, the whole house would soon be
in the "red". It was a good thing we had been so close when the
call came in. A call went out for the aid-car, that man would
need oxygen and a hospital emergency room if he was still alive.
"There may be more in there, radio for a ambulance", ordered the
Chief.~
~Hose lines were layed to the front door and window where flames
could be seen, firefighters were sent to the roof to "ventilate"
the smoke and heat, and a ladder was raised to rescue the man
hanging out the window.~
~The man was unconscious, his skin very pink but unburnt, he was
given oxygen and transported to the hospital. The fire seen thru
the window was "knocked down" from the outside and firefighters
with airmasks on advanced into the house in search of fire and
victims. The fire had been confined to the bedroom where we could
see the flames, it had started to spread thru the doorway and
across the hall ceiling after the man had opened the window
upstairs, creating a draft of fresh air as the smoke rushed
outside."~
~The bedroom was the only room damaged by fire, it had been
confined to the lower portion of the double bed for some time
before the drapes and curtins ignited and dropped to the floor.
The upper part of the bed was covered only with the lower sheet,
the upper sheet, blankets and bedspread appeared to have been
crumpled and doubled back over the lower part of the bed where
the fire had started.~
~Shifting thru the burnt remains at the bottom end of the bed I
located? Yes those curley hair thin wires, an electric blanket
again! The blanket had not been tucked in at the foot of the bed
nor a sorce of ignition such as a space heater. I had to find the
thermostat control head. It was melted on top of the nightstand,
but was still intact enough to see the contact points fused
togather, and on the bottom side of the brass containg them I
could see that same rainbow of colors, the top was covered with
melted plastic.~
~I went outside to get some fresh air and John was comforting a
crying elderly lady, she was the homeowner who had been visiting
her husband in a nursing home and had just arrived to find the
fire trucks there and wanted to get inside and see what damage
the fire did to her home. She said she and her resently devorced
son lived in the house. She slept downstairs and he had the room
upstairs. I told her that her son was in the hospital and the
fire had started in her bed.~
~I ashed her if she had made the bed up and shut off the electric
blanket when she got up and she said, "No I thru back the covers
because I was going to change the sheets today and after I was
with my husband awhile I remembered I did not turn the blanket
off so I came home early and found you people here, you really
messed up my house and broke my vase."~
~I explained to her that her electric blanket caused the fire and
she said, "I should have made my bed." Maybe that was a clue to
this fire.~
~Several more electric blanket caused fires started with the bed
covers thrown back over the electric blankets or with the beds
made up with other blankets or bedspreads on top of them. I ran
tests with old and new electric blankets by soldering the contact
points togather, others I doubled over and still others I placed
blankets and bedspreads of them, I watched them turn into
"hotplates" as the blankets started scorching and smoking in the
pattern those curly hair thin wires were in. It was time
something was done. I made up a report and sent them with photos
I had taken to the United States Consumer Product Safty
Commission and made news releases to the newspapers.~
~In August of 1978 I recieved a forworded letter from an Attorney
in Indianapolis, Indianna, he was representing a cliant in
litigation in which he was attempting to establish that an
electric blanket caused a fire which destroyed a home because it
was defective and was trying to show the manufactures had not
properly put users under notice of any such danger. I pointed out
that just like people dying with smoke detectors installed in
their home, HAD THEY READ THE DIRECTIONS enclosed with the
products it never woud have happened. Enclosed with his letter
was something I had never seen in print, the "paper" I had
written, "The Cause Of Electric Blanket Fires" Something had been
done, somebody else cared. PLEASE READ THE DIRECTIONS.~
~I have the GREATEST Cyber Pen Pal in England who is truly a
FRIEND. I sent him this page and I thought you would like to
share his experiences with fire. Bert my friend I hope you do not
mind. God Bess You and Iris~
November 11, 1998
Hello Lloyd,
I read with interest your account of the number of domestic fires
caused by miss use of electric blankets. Just shows that you
can't beat the old-fashioned methods. Let's face it, no one ever
caught fire in bed using a hot water bottle, did they ! I've also
heard of young couples who, though they never actually caught
alight, did lay in bed smoking after sex.
I can only recall three examples of my own experiences with
indoor fires. First was as a young soldier,when I entered a smoke
filled barrack room because I thought that another soldier was in
there. As it turned out,the smoke was too thick for me to stay
inside without breathing apparatus and the guy I went in to
'rescue' had already left, and the building was not on fire
either. What had happened was that a couple of officers,seeking
to play a practical joke at the expense of the privates, had
placed a large military smoke bomb in a corridor behind the
barrack room door.Apart from filling the place with smoke, it had
also damaged the barrack room's back exit beyond repair. If an
ordinary squaddie had done that, he would have been charged and
ended up in detention, as it was officers, it was put down to
laddish high jinks and they were quietly told not to do it again.
Second occasion was when my young wife forgot to turn the gas
ring off under a frying pan after serving dinner. We were quietly
enjoying our meal when we heard the noise of plaster falling from
a ceiling, when I saw what was happening, I switched off the
gas,grasped the pan by the handle and walked backwards with it
down a flight of stairs,along a short passage and out into the
back yard, where I was able to place it on the floor in safety.
Then went back in to find that,fortunately, the ceiling had not
in fact caught fire only started to come down from the heat.
My final adventure with fire was when the women who lived in the
next house to us, while frying fish & chips, went upstairs to get
something from a bedroom. While she was there the telephone rang
so she took the call on the bedroom extension. Chatting to a
friend, she completely forgot about her cooking situation
downstairs until too late. She rang the fire service and then
fled the house. I assured myself that both her and her children
were out, then went into the house to see what I could do. When I
arrived at the open kitchen door I found that the ceiling was
already itself ablaze and the fat on the cooker was emitting too
much smoke and heat for me to approach close. Too much for me to
handle alone, so I firmly closed the door shut and went back
outside to await the firemen. The engines arrived quickly and
dealt with the problem before it had spread too far. The leading
officer complimented me on the prompt and appropriate action that
I had taken which had effectively limited the speed and spread of
the fire.
The funny thing about this last affair concerned my daughter -
sweet sixteen at the time and wearing the latest teenage fashion
in tight fitting ' toreador' pants'. We asked the firemen if they
would like a cup of tea. We made a large pot full, filled a tray
with about a dozen mugs and then handed it to our daughter to
take outside to all the young lads. For her help and kindness she
suffered 10 minutes of ribald male chauvinistic good humour,
mostly worded around the tight fitting trousers she was wearing.
Mum,Dad and the Chief Officer stood there laughing while the lads
enjoyed their joke at my daughters expense. ( She enjoyed the
male attention too, of course ). You, being yourself an
ex-smokebandit, would appreciate that situation and the use of
humour to discharge the tension that was left over in the lads
after putting out the blaze.
While a teenaged soldier, I did fight one rather nasty bush
fire. At the camp I was in at the time we had to mount a regular
local heathland fire piquet during the spring and summer months.
On the very first occasion that I was delegated for this duty, we
had a 'call-out'. We were the first unit in (a dozen lads and an
officer), the woodland was well alight and it was obvious that we
would need help so the back up and reserve units were also called
out. There was no nearby water for the fire service to use and
the method of dealing with the blaze was by beating. We were all
young and fit lads and we fought that fire for an hour and a half
before we began to gain control. Our officer was particularly
pleased as we were the first group to gain control of our
section, but we were exhausted. We had been beating hard with
only a handkerchief round our faces for protection and had in
fact been forced back about a hundred yards before we stopped
it. There was a lane nearby and a house opposite, only about
twenty yards from where we had won our battle. We all sat down on
the ground at the side of the road trying to recuperate our
drained energy. Out of the house opposite came the owner, a
retired army officer (a colonel,I think). "Oh !" he said "you've
got it out, jolly well done. Last time a fire crossed the road it
cost me drinks all round. " He then told us that there was a
maid and butler in the house and if we went to the kitchen they
would give us a drink of water. Bear in mind, we had just
controlled a fire that if it had continued would have crossed the
road and burnt his bloody house down to the ground. Anyway, we
did cross the road and go to the kitchen. About 40 young and very
thirsty soldiers. The maid and the butler were marvellous. They
worked like beavers to serve us with large jugs of water until
our thirst was satisfied. I think we must have drunk at least a
gallon each, the sweetest water I had ever tasted in my life. It
was not their house, but they at least appreciated the efforts we
had put in to save the fire spreading.
The other units went back to camp. We remained and our officer
said that as the duty unit we had to maintain a presence at the
site all night to see that the blaze did not start up again. He
said that four would have to stay until midnight, four would
return after supper to cover until 4 am, and the last lot would
have to cover from 4am until 8 am.
Four of us lads immediately volunteered to stay on until
midnight. Our officer was most impressed, commended us and
promised that when we were eventually transported back to our
camp he would personally see that there would be a very good
supper waiting for us (and there was). What he failed to
appreciate in praising our keenness, was that we four, all from
the same squad and good friends, had already figured out that
the ones who volunteered to remain behind and stay until
midnight, would then be able to go back, go to their bunks and
sleep without the bind of having to get up again in the middle of
the night to return to the scene of the fire for four hours.
That's it for tales of my duties in the service of King and
Country. More another time.
To-day, November 11th, is Remembrance Day, both here and in the
USA. To-day is when we remember those who sacrificed on our
behalf in two world wars. In the UK it is 'Poppy Day', people
buy small artificial red poppies which are worn as a reminder of
the poppy fields of Flanders where so many died. The money raised
by the selling of the buttonholes goes to the ex-servicemens
charities. At 11-O-Clock there is a two minute period of
silence. A cannon is fired and the country comes to a halt.
Businesses stop work, shops stop trading, trains in stations are
delayed and buses pull to the side of the road. In many busy
streets traffic halts and people stand together in silence to
mark the occasion. Iris and I were in a shop in a large London
shopping precinct. At eleven, the tills closed and staff and
customers together stood in silence to pay their homage.
"At the going down of the sun and in the mornings, we will
remember them "
My son is coming here this week to make changes to my computer
internet programme. He has promised me that this will
substantially increase it's speed. In fact, it will be so fast
that you will be getting replies to your e-mails before you have
finished sending them. They will be so fast that I will have to
stop sending them over the Atlantic and send them the long way
round by the west to east route to slow them down a bit. This
means that I may have to write the address in Japanese.
All the Best
Bert
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