Chimney fire

[firefighterjake]

When I was 13, I thought I'd try my hand at whipping up a batch of doughnuts. So I filled a pot with grease on the stove, and turned it on high to get hot. My attention quickly turned elsewhere, as I was 13, and I forgot about the oil on the stove, if I recall correctly, it was crisco.

Some time later, my sister from the living room asked why I was burning candles in the kitchen. Oh! the doughnuts!

I ran into the kitchen to find a flaming cauldron of hot grease lighting the kitchen cabinets on fire. Mom and Dad were not around. The liquor and crisco was stored right above the stove. Questionable judgement there.

My sister and her friend ran shreiking from the house to save themselves.

I looked at the situation, and knew right then that I would not be the one to burn down the family home without giving it my best effort.

I went into an adjoining cabinet, retrieved another pot, went to the sink, and filled it with water. The kitchen faucet sure seemed to go slow. There was a giant box of arm and hammer baking soda in the cabinet right next to the pot that I had taken to fill with water.

I then proceeded to throw the water onto the grease fire. Hey, what did I know, I was 13.

Would you believe it doused that grease fire right out!

Shortly thereafter, the local fire department showed up. They brought their big fans in to clear the black smoke out of the house.

The house would have burned down if I had waited for help to put the fire out.

I learned later that water won't put out grease fires.

I got to go to work with Dad for the rest of that summer.

Two comments ...

Technically water can put out a grease fire ... if one has enough and you apply it in a sustained fashion. This is why we are able to put out car fires, fuel spill fires, etc with a fire hose ... although using foam or a foam additive for certain types of fires makes the job easier and quicker. That said ... yeah ... water is the wrong thing to put on a grease fire since I read in a fire journal that the water droplets become superheated when exposed to the heat of the fire, turn into steam in an explosive fashion and this typically causes the grease to be tossed up and ignited ... hence the resulting fireball.

Second item ... wish you had not mentioned donuts ... I'm hungry now and can only think of those chu-nuts (chur-nuts) I made a couple of weeks ago.