FIRE!

FLOOD! My parents flat flooded a couple of months ago while they were away on vacation. I got a whole bunch of hysterical phone calls from their downstairs neighbors when I got home from work at 7am. It was quite the experience.

Two fire engines turned up and firemen went pelting into the building. They let us back in a 7:45, when we learned that a toaster on the third floor had caused a mini fire, but had fizzled out quite quickly (i.e well before the fire brigade got there).

Making toast is now forbidden.

Still I'm a mean motherfucker with a fire extinguisher.

There was a fire at my school when I was fifteen, which added to the general bizaareness of the early months of 1986 (snow that settled in London, Chernobyl, Nana Moskouri in the charts). A former pupil with a grudge set fire to the South West Wing of the school, where my classroom was situated. The whole corridor was completely gutted. It so happened that this particular part of the school was on loan from the neighbouring junior school and was to be vacated by us in a few weeks *anyway*. A new block was being built for us to move into, but wasn't quite ready. I went home and my Mum asked, "Why are you home? Has the school burnt down?" to which I was able to answer in the affirmative. She stared at me for as long as it took to realise I wasn't fibbing and said something like, "How awful!". A lot of kids lost all their work for the year, but I kept my books at home on account that my desk didn't have a bottom to it (if I opened the lid I could see my legs). I was therefore much in demand so that the other kids could photocopy all my exercise books.

We moved into our new wing after being sent home for a few days. It certainly weasn't ready to be used...there was condensation running down all the windows and walls and in our very first lesson (Maths) a flourescent light fitting fell off the ceiling and swung across the room, twatting a girl on the head. She wasn't badly hurt and in some ways it was the right person to happen to as her mother was the Matron. We relocated to a new classroom and our maths teacher, notorious for his poor jokes said "And now we'll start again after that bit of light relief."

(Oh, Grange Hill did.)

one kid was making a lovely seafood stir fry. he was mucking around with the wok, being all fancy show off chef-like, which was fine until he decided to give the wok another spray with the aerosol can of cooking oil. he accidently sprayed directly onto the flame and this giant wall of fire went up and set the range hood alight. the kid collapsed into a hysterical ball and rolled around in the corner like a deranged foetus until the fire put itself out. we still have it all on video.

I had never actually done it myself (this was my first "NQT" year) and put way too much eths/meths on the cotton wool. The balloon went up very quickly, hit the ceiling, and the impact must have caused a splash, whatever, either way the balloon itself caught fire and a small curl of flame started to slowly work itself around the plastic.

You give one kid the job of holding the anchor thread, but I snatched it from him and pulled it down as quickly as i felt safe and not to disturb the kids. By the time it came down it was useless and luckily there was little smoke to be seen, but my heart was racing. Some of the kids, especially the one's that I'd armed with squirty water bottles to put out the cotton ball, were most amused. I expect this is one of those daft teacher incidents that they've never forgotten.

The fact that I, of all people, showed the most presence of mind in this situation should be something that shames my other housemates for the rest of their lives.

The ashes travelling up with the flames might cast shadows, however, and heating the air will change the way light travels through it.

I removed the pan from the hob and started shouting "SHIT!" repeatedly, The fire went out promptly after I removed it from the heat - unfortantly I thing I've killed my mate's extractor fan, and I'm gonna have to stump up for a replacement filter,

I continued cooking, and the curry was fine (if a little mild - I think all the heat got burned out of it) - after a couple of popadoms and a bottle of Grolsch everythign was fine.

What surprised me was my reaction. I always thought I'd be an obsolute wimp when it comes to fire, but I acted really quickly - I removed the pan from the heat, remembered not to just chuck it under a running tap, I grabbed a wet towel and was about to smother it before it went out by itself. I guess I'm better in a crisis than I thought!

Fire scares me less now, I think.

Oh dear god, not even a fire but a fire DRILL just now in the library. The sounds of those alarms: ear-splitting! Calculated to make my brain decompose and my heart pound for a good half hour. Ach lieber!

So now I'm like "oh man when I get home I better look at my lease for rental insurance bcz what if my house sets on fire aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

Fire BAD!

It has to be an odd sort of waking nightmare having your house burn down when you're gone.

once in science class my friend got called to the principal's office. turns out half his street had exploded when a local chemical plant went kablooey. his house was spared, but police were goin' crazy trying to account for everyone.

also: when i was about six, a few of the bad kids from the neighborhood (aged 10+/-) tried to start a forest fire to see how it would burn. they thought they failed, so they went home.

later that evening, my father was going to sleep when he noticed the ground was growing magma-red in the woods behind our house. though the bad kids had failed in lighting a forest fire, they had ignited an underground root system that stretched for half a mile. i watched from my bedroom (pretending to be asleep, of course) as firefighters dug trenches around my backyard, sprayed the trees and house with water, and cut fire breaks in my mom's potato patch.