imcnblu
Resident G2 Guru of C-I
At about 2AM, I was changing my daughter's diaper and smelled something really weird. I turned around and saw smoke behind me, and immediately investigated. I opened up the basement door and was overwhelmed with smoke. Went downstairs and noticed the insulation on the ceiling of the basement (underside of the main floor) was burning like crazy immediately above the basement door that goes outside. So I ran upstairs again, told my wife to get out and get the baby, I ran upstairs to get my oldest daughter who was already asleep and got everyone outside. I ran back in briefly to get a few critical items (food/clothing for baby, phones, ID's, etc.) and came back out and had my wife call 911 while I alerted the neighbors to get out of their houses in case it spread to their places (as its a connected townhouse).
I asked my immediate neighbor for a pot of water to go down and throw on the ceiling around the fire so that the remaining insulation would be too wet to burn, to make an attempt to slow/stop the spread of fire. When I got back downstairs, the fire had already trickled out, and didn't spread TOO far.
Now, long story short, the investigators believe that someone tried to break in, as the window was broken (and APPARENTLY, the window was broken BEFORE the fire, and had seemingly been broken from the inside, so he threw a lot of questions around about that. I had no idea the window was broken, as there is normally a curtain over the window, and I'm never down there in that part of the basement enough to notice a broken window)
Anyhow, they believe that either someone was breaking into the basement and was smoking while doing so, which lit the curtain. OR someone was down there fooling around and INTENTIONALLY set the curtain on fire in hopes of creating a major arson case. That is there preliminary guess on what might have happened. Considering that there is no wiring damaged (even the stuff that was exposed to fire), that the fire was 100% not electrical or accidental. They said there was definitely some kind of foul play going on, now they are investigating what it could have been.
Thankfully, no one was hurt, and no major property lost. The door is gonna need to be replaced, and some new insulation is gonna have to be put in, but otherwise, the damage is just cosmetic stuff.
_______
This is the ONE upside to having a crying baby in the house to keep me up at all hours of the night.
I asked my immediate neighbor for a pot of water to go down and throw on the ceiling around the fire so that the remaining insulation would be too wet to burn, to make an attempt to slow/stop the spread of fire. When I got back downstairs, the fire had already trickled out, and didn't spread TOO far.
Now, long story short, the investigators believe that someone tried to break in, as the window was broken (and APPARENTLY, the window was broken BEFORE the fire, and had seemingly been broken from the inside, so he threw a lot of questions around about that. I had no idea the window was broken, as there is normally a curtain over the window, and I'm never down there in that part of the basement enough to notice a broken window)
Anyhow, they believe that either someone was breaking into the basement and was smoking while doing so, which lit the curtain. OR someone was down there fooling around and INTENTIONALLY set the curtain on fire in hopes of creating a major arson case. That is there preliminary guess on what might have happened. Considering that there is no wiring damaged (even the stuff that was exposed to fire), that the fire was 100% not electrical or accidental. They said there was definitely some kind of foul play going on, now they are investigating what it could have been.
Thankfully, no one was hurt, and no major property lost. The door is gonna need to be replaced, and some new insulation is gonna have to be put in, but otherwise, the damage is just cosmetic stuff.
_______
This is the ONE upside to having a crying baby in the house to keep me up at all hours of the night.