OnlyForNow said:
When your ready no please share your story, what happened - plan get out etc
Tuesday I woke up around 3 AM vaguely aware of hearing what I thought was bugs tapping on the window like June bugs sometimes do. I wish I had gotten up immediately but I went back to sleep. I don't know if it was 30 seconds later or 30 minutes later my wife screamed that there was a fire. We were woken up by the crackle of wood burning. I shot up and looked in the backyard and the entire backyard was glowing orange. Our entire 15x25 deck was on fire. Every square inch was burning.
Ran out of our bedroom and thankfully heard my son upstairs yelling that there was a fire and to get out. He and my daughter were both upstairs and came down immediately. My wife got our two dogs out. It was scary, of course, but we got out without any real danger. No smoke in the house yet.
I ran through the garage to go around to the other side of the deck to access a garden hose but as soon as I open the gate, I realized I wouldn't be able to get to the spigot due to the fire. I ran back through the garage and grabbed our fire extinguisher, and went out through the back door to the patio and emptied the entire extinguisher without even making a dent in the fire. As I was spraying the extinguisher, I watched the flames start to go up the column of the patio cover and the cover immediately caught fire so I hightailed it out. I burned my leg pretty good on some patio furniture that was behind me as I was facing the fire so that was also a good indication that that I should GTFO.
First fire truck arrived on scene in less than four minutes, but it took them several more minutes to hook up to the hydrants and start spraying. At this point, I really thought they were gonna save the bulk of the house, but the fire spread really quickly, and it was quickly obvious it was gonna be a goner.
It took them, what I guess was about two hours to get it out. They left and told me that another truck will be back in about 45 minutes for firewatch but that truck never came. About an hour after they left we had to call 911 again as the fire erupted again. They came back pretty quick and really had a hell of a time trying to get it out. Apparently it was just a really difficult enclosed wall space or between some beams that was not wanting to go out.
They have not 100% determined the cause but the arson investigators and the insurance investigators both say they think it was electrical. One of the previous owners apparently had drilled in from the outside to tap it into an inside outlet to run power out to the deck. I had noticed the conduit there before, but honestly never paid much attention to it.
