Well guys, this is what took place at my home this Thursday night. Around 10:30PM, I was out in my living room, doing my Droidrzr stuff, my girl was on our bed in our room doing her school work. She encountered a complicated problem that she felt she needed her good graphing calculator for. She was about to skip this problem, but hear a weird noise (coming from our gas dryer). So she decided to get up and grab her calculator and check on the noise at the same time. Well, when she opened the laundry room doors she began to see smoke. So she called me. I came down the hallway, and looked into the the laundry closet to see smoke coming from within the dryer. I immediately knew it was lint burning. (My 2 and 5 yr old daughters were asleep in the room behind me, and her (my 9 yr old "step" daughter was asleep in the room diagonal from me). I peered into the jams of the dryer door and saw flames. I told her to run into the kitchen as I raced into my garage to look for our fire extinguisher (where I had 2, but grabbed 1[which I thought at the time was appropriate]). I finally made the decision that I was gonna shoot off the fire extinguisher, knowing what kind of holy mess these things make. Not to mention the smoke alarms were now going off within my entire house. Well, I pulled the trigger on that thing and this was when it got REAL. Between the black smoke getting worse and the oxygen choking powder from the fire extinguisher, I began having a hard time breating, but my families safety came first. I covered my face and yelled to my girl "CALL 911 RIGHT NOW, IT's NOT GOING OUT!!!" Which it wasn't every time I sprayed the extinguisher into the dryer, the flame would die down, but for only a moment. My next thought was to pull the 2 plugs from the wall for the washer and dryer and to grab EVERYTHING within reach from the the laundry closet, as well as attempt to grab the clothes from within the dryer without getting burned (Which I did). In this short time, I ran down stairs and grabbed the next fire extinguisher caused my first was exhausted and the fire was still going stronger than before (lint ownz you, btw). My next major concern was getting my family out of the house. Luckily 911 had already instructed my girl to grab the kids and leave. Which she did. She went into both bedrooms, grabbed all 3 girls, covered their faces and got them downstairs and out of the house. But I wasn't going to let my house burn to the ground, especially knowing that the gas to the dryer was still on and I could hear (over the smoke alarms) sirens in the distance. Some kind of major adrenaline rush hit me and I managed to (through the flames and shit) literally man-handle my washing machine out of my way to gain access to the gas valve and shut it off (dumb move in retrospect as the whole thing could have blown up in my face). But no less, I shut it off. This was when my second extinguisher had run out. At this point, my entire home was dark. Between the smoke and the extinguisher crap that covered everything I couldn't breathe or see anything more than 6 inches in front of me, though the flames were still clear as day. I raced down to my kitchen, grabbed a pot from my stove (from dinner) and a dish towel and ran back to the burning dryer. I dumped the remain of our pasta dinner out of the pot onto my floor and began to fill it with water in the bathroom. I also wet the tower and covered my face as I was getting light headed and couldn't breathe at all at this point. I then started dumping water, pot by pot onto the fire (a futile effort). All this did was splash burning hot water and steam back up at my face, which did nothing but burn me. I could hear the sirens getting closer, it had been at least 5 minutes now since this all began. Thank GOD, the guys in turn-out gear came running into my house and up the stairs. They had a huge extinguisher full of water as well as a foam suppressant. I backed off and let them finish it as I was completely wrecked at this point. I ran outside for air, where I nearly vomited. I gasped. It felt so nice to breathe again. I returned to the house to open more windows and turn off my climate control to avoid the smoke from running throughout the rest of my home. The firemen took the dryer, still smoldering and carried it downstairs and too the street where they used their truck to really douse it. I opened a bunch of windows and sat in awe of what just happened. One of the firemen said to me: "be proud man, I know you don't feel well and I will tell you your freaking insane, but you saved your home tonight man. Had you not remained inside, in the smoke and fire to keep this under control, we would be having this conversation in the street as we watched your home burn down, rather than within it." This set in hard to me. Was I insane? Or was I determined? I don't know. It's amazing how fast instinct sets in in a true emergency. And I have never really been in a situation this close to home before. Whoa!
Moral of the story: ALWAYS clean your lint traps. Every 6 months inspect/clean your dryer vents. This is NOT exclusive to gas, LP or Electric dryers. And NEVER, EVER run a dryer at night or when you're not home. Because you can come home to nothing or worse, wake up dead. This was a ticking time bomb that I never even knew was in my home. And I had JUST cleaned this dryer out less than 6 months ago. I had it completely apart. Vacuumed the entire insides, got everything out. The cause of my fire, was a little bit of lint past the trap in the exhaust fan which lit when the drum motor began to fail and started smoking. Yeah, there's a maximum temperature sensor, but all that does is turn the dryer off...it don't turn the fire off. Wow!
tl;dr Fire in house because of dryer. Tucstwo's a hero, saved his family and his home. People, please clean out your dryers lint trap and be aware of lint in your duct work. Fires HAPPEN. 15,000 a year because of dryers. With hundreds of deaths and millions in property damage.
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