You had a dryer catch fire, but caught it by dragging it out...
This one was a chinese student running a vacuum cleaner-
he snagged somethign that stopped the revolving rug-beater
drum underneath, and friction caused the belt to catch fire.
At that point, the fan blew a bit of flame into the dust
bag, which caught fire- and became a bigger mess.
The BIG problem was: the student panicked and ran away, when
he was already holding the handle to begin with. He should have
just thrown the entire vac out the door and into the parking lot.
Instead- it caught the entire apartment building on fire, and
about 30 people lost their homes. Four apartments were actually
burned, but most had severe smoke damage, and they deemed the
building non-inhabitable, until repairs were completed. Those
repairs are still not finished- over eight months later.
The student was NOT mister popularity around here, and I'm
surprised that the apartment comples even let him move into
another one of their units. He didn't even warn neighbors
that there was a fire, or call the fire department! Other
people noticed smoke and fire alarms going off, then banged
on doors to warn people about the fire, and called the fire
department. From my building 30 feet away, the first thing
we noticed was the sound of breaking glass- not the alarms.
With cool weather, and all windows closed, the alarms didn't
carry far.
It took the fire department 20 minutes to even put water on
the fire. As long as there were no people inside, they didn't
want to touch it, until all utilities were disconnected.
As it turned out- I was the only resident around who even had
so much as a garden hose, to help with... I couldn't do a lot
for the main fire itself - but I could keep it from spreading
to shrubs, grass, and small trees, so it wouldn't make it over
to MY building, just up the hill... |
