The Periphery of the Mind

The ancient Greeks told a story of Prometheus, the titan who looked upon the suffering of mankind and stole fire from the Gods to give man to ease such suffering. In return for his compassion, Prometheus was chained to a rock and had his liver plucked out by ravenous birds every day.

What does this have to do with anything?

Last Sunday, I decided I needed to return the gift of Prometheus. Last Sunday I nearly burned down our house.

I was trying to cook some arancini for dinner. While it was filled with unforseen problem after unforseen problem, I -finally- had something worth frying in oil. As I slowly lowered the arancini ball into the oil, the oil shot up and boiled over. And started covering the stove with fire.

Being the quick-witted fellow I am, I immediately started yelling "help, help" as I stood there wacthing the fire spread. After a second or two of that, Maryanne arrived and yelled "where's the fire extinguisher" snapping me out of my hypnotic state. While she looked for the extinguisher, I grabbed a bag of sugar and dumped it on the flame. I'm not sure if that helped or not, but it didn't put out the fire. I suspect it didn't help.

Maryanne couldn't find the downstairs extinguisher, so she ran upstairs to get the other one. You can never have too many fire extinguishers really. By this point I remembered where the kitchen one was, grabbed it, pulled the pin, and quickly sprayed myself in the face. -Then- I turned it on the stove, where the flames were about sixteen inches high and spreading.

I have yet to check, but I'm fairly certain I got a pair that was good against grease and oil fires. But I'm also fairly certain that the pair is six years old or so. Regardless, the fire didn't go out and seemed to actually spread. Just as Maryanne called her mom asking for help to put out a grease fire, I remembered we had sugar -and- flour. Unfortunately, the flour was in a cabinet. Over the stove. Currently on fire and rapidly filling the kitchen with dark smoke.

I reached into the cabinet, got the flour out, and realized that wouldn't be enough. I needed to turn off the burner before the fire would go out. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention this fire was on a back burner? Next to the stove top controls? Well it was. So I'm trying to figure out how to get my hand back there, without burning it, so I can turn off the burner, so I can dump flour on the flames and boiling oil.

I don't really remember much, I think I just buckled up and braved it. I think the smoke alarm in the hallway on the other side of the kitchen wall going off is what compelled me to do it. I reached in and turned off the burner with my right hand, jerked it back as fast as I could and started dumping flour with my left. By this point the upstairs smoke alarm was going off. But the fire was out. It was only two minutes or so, at the most. A few more seconds and the fire would have likely gotten to the cabinets or countertop.

Maryanne started opening windows and doors, finding the cats and putting them in the master bedroom with the door shut. I helped open windows, turn on fans, and search the house for cats. Squeaky was upstairs, shut in the weight room for some reason; if the fire -had- spread and we fled, he'd have died. Pee-Wee was hiding under the couch, and I'm not sure he'd have run for it either. Aslan was the only with the sense enough to go sit by the window. Maryanne and I coughed quite a bit as we opened the house, my nose full of black snot. The house open, the cats secured, and the fans running full blast, we shut the doors and went to Shanna's while the place aired out.

I stayed home the next day, working on computer projects for work and taking breaks to clean the kitchen. Black grease and smoke seemed to cover everything. We were really lucky. The damage was minimal really, and required more cleaning than anything else. The electrical cables under the stove were covered in burnt oil, but otherwise unharmed. The side of the cabinets, next to the hood and hidden from normal view, showed some small signs of paint blistering. The pot that started it all may be ruined, but I'm not certain yet. Really, it could have been a lot worse.

Maryanne took it all in stride, and didn't yell at me and didn't get in the way when I was trying to put out the fire. She kinda' feels bad for not pulling me out of the kitchen, but if she had we might not have a house. Decisions, decisions. I feel bad about it all. I shouldn't have used a small pot for deep frying with; I knew better. On the other hand, the oil shouldn't have boiled over like it did; so I didn't know better. I did learn a few important things though....

• Keep flour -away- from your stove in case you need it to put out a fire.
  
• Have as big a bag as you can get for fire extinguishing only, and save it as such.
  
• If you buy a stove, buy one with the controls on the front of the stove, not the back.
  

That's pretty much it I guess.