Lucky - The Lynx Effect

A couple of days ago I wrote about the fire at Strachans in Aboyne. What I hadn't thought of was that just a day later we would have a Chimney Fire in our house. Luckily there was no major damage and just some embarrassment at having to call the Fire Brigade. If you look closely at the photograph above you will see that the metal grate at the top of the Chimney is heavily blackened, it was at one point glowing a very good shade of red with the heat.

The fire itself was caused by something that should not have been in the fire. Just at the end of the night we were burning some extra cardboard and in a box of cardboard someone had put an aerosol can of Lynx deodorant and a plastic inhaler, why and who we are not sure.

I had not long put the box into the fire and replaced the Fire Guard when we heard a small pop this, we think, was a small plastic inhaler used by one of my sons. I was just looking at the fire to see what had caused this when there was an enormous bang as the aerosol can exploded. The force of the blast blew the fire guard out of the fireplace and sprayed ashes and sparks around our lounge. Luckily, even though I was only sitting about 4-5 feet from the fire, the guard did it's job and stopped most of them from getting past it. Almost immediately we could hear a roaring as the chimney went on fire with the debris blown up the flue.

By now smoke alarms were going off around the house, we have 4 all mains and inter-connected, we dialed 999 and got the fire brigade called out as it looked as if the fire was taking hold. I then poured water on the fire to extinguish it and shut the doors to the lounge to try and stop the fire. Luckily it burnt itself out fairly quickly and within 5 minutes all signs of smoke and flames had stopped coming out of the chimney.

The fire brigade, despite being located 6 miles away and being a retained crew, arrived within 15 minutes and checked the house out thoroughly with a heat-sensing camera to ensure it truly was out. After a quick cup of coffee and filling in a report about the fire they were off happy not to have had as much work as the previous day.

It was only then I realised how lucky we had been. If the guard had not been up it is likely that the whole lounge would have been showered with red hot debris and sparks and we could have had a much more serious situation. As it is we got away with no damage apart from our blushes. The combination of melted plastic and other debris could have caused quite serious injuries apart from setting fire to the lounge. The photo below shows the two offending articles.

The other thing we realised was how lucky we are to have retained firemen available in our rural area as if the the EU has it's way we may not be so lucky. I'm glad to see that this is an area that our local prospective Conservative Councilor Jo Pick is highlighting in her campaign for the local by-election on the 23rd April 2009. As usual we see the Lib Dems at their hypocritical best saying they support the opt out of the EU directive when one of their number in Scotland voted to end the opt out along with two Labour MEPS.


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