Where there's smoke..

I could have died last night, but fortunately I had insomnia. At 4AM, I turned on the electric heater in my bedroom for the first time this season. Then I lay there awake for a long time wishing that I were asleep. I was amazed at how quickly the heater warmed the room. It had a strange burning smell but I thought, "Well, it hasn't been on since May so maybe this is just something that happens when it hasn't been used for awhile." (Before you judge my logic remember that it was the middle of the night and I was really only half awake) Then I thought, "It's strange though. I thought in the past that it usually took several hours for that thing to even cut the chill in weather like this. It sure is warming things up fast...and it sure smells....almost like burning plastic." That was when I looked over at it and saw the flames coming out the top. "Hmm," thought I. "I don't think it's supposed to do that."

That was when I got out of bed, realizing I was in a bit of danger. I tried to remember where the fire extinguisher was, but then I remembered that I don't have one. "Strange," thought I. "It never occurred to me until now that I didn't have a fire extinguisher. What a silly thing not to have one! What if there's a fire someday?" Of course, in my four o'clock delirium, I then remembered there was a fire now. It was still a small one, to be fair, but electrical fires can spread quite quickly.

"Right," thought I as the power of reason began to return to me, "how do you put out an electrical fire?" I remembered the rules very quickly:

1) Pull the plug out or switch off the power at the fuse box. This may stop the fire immediately.

2) Smother the fire with a fire blanket, or use a dry powder.

3) Never use water on it.

So this is what I did:

1) I pulled the plug out, but it didn't stop the fire immediately.

2) I realized the fire was inside the heater where it couldn't be reached by a fire blanket (even if I had one) and I didn't have any dry powder.

3) I poured water on it.

Well, it worked anyhow. Then I went back to bed and thought about how I had now survived two such near tragedies in this flat (see the account of the Great Rice Fire of 2003 in the journal entry for November 7th, 2003). I considered this for awhile until I realized I was shaking. It wasn't fear, of course, that bothered me. It was the cold!

I decided, now that the heater was out of commission, I would need to find another way of warming myself. Fortunately, there was another viable option. I had been given an electric blanket for my bed, so I plugged it in and turned it on. It warmed my bed nicely and felt extremely comfortable. The only problem was that now it was even more impossible for me to sleep. I kept remembering something about a movie I had seen as a child called "The Burning Bed."

Oh well. At least I knew this would give me something interesting to write about in my journal the next day.