Friend lost house to fire today. This is scary and very important to read!!

[Caroline]

A good friend of mine came close to loosing her life in a housefire this morning. Thank goodness the fire fighers were able to get her out in time. When she told me the cause of the fire it made me just sick. The fire was caused by an extension cord. This cord was not frayed, it was not under something, it wasn't overloaded either. The cause of the fire was because it had overheated because it was old. Apparently extension cords have a warning that they should only be used for a few years, I did not know that. We have quite a few "older" extension cords in our house.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Firefighters-rescue-woman-from-burning-Renton-home-210238011.html

 

[Newt]

OMG... Ive never heard of that before. So glad your friend was okay!

 

[Jenn]

I plugged in a little heater into an extension cord on one of those cold mornings, to keep by Maya (my chihuahua) so she would stay warm, and hubby came home and told me those heaters aren't to be plugged into extension cords. I generally don't leave anything plugged into an extension cord unattended anyway, but when we felt the cord, it was red hot. And I know that all of our extension cords are quite a few years old...

Glad your friend got out of the house unharmed. What a scary situation!

 

[addictedtochins]

Thank you for the warning. I want to add that years ago we had a chest freezer in a spare bedroom, we went away for a few days and when we came back there was a terrible burning/hot smell we traced to the freezer. For some reason a pillow was laying against the vent, we were lucky we got home before a fire started. I also had a room fan that had started out being slow when turned on for a couple of seconds. I knew I needed to get a new one on payday. I don't remember the details, but what happened was I turned it on.....I must have stepped out for a few minutes or something.....anyway, the fan never started turning and I came back to a overheating fan that was almost ready to burst into flames. Replace those fans after 2-3 seasons of heavy use and don't leave them un-attended

 

[Pikaia]

Wow! Glad your friend is alright!!! That is good information to know and thanks for passing it on!