Lately, I have been spending far too much time with firemen.  Twice in the last few days, I have had to summon the fire department.  Fortunately, nothing bad happened in either case.

Last Friday, I went to pick up my wife after work (we both work at the same high school.) She asked me if I smelled an unusual smell.  There was a definite smell of something burning, but the smell was in a strange place in the room.  The custodian was leaving for the day and said that he would check the boiler room which was adjacent to my wife’s room on the outside of the building.

A few minutes later, the office called my wife and said that he had reported smoke in the boiler room.  I went around back to the room to see what was going on and saw that the room was filled with smoke.  I called the office and asked them to call the fire department.  About that tie, the custodian came running out of the room.  HE had discovered that the clothes dryer that is in there was on and was beginning to burn (best guess is that it had been running for about 3 hours and the shut off hadn’t worked.) He had managed to unplug it, but it was still smoking badly.

The fire station is about 3 blocks from the school.  I started wondering why the fire department hadn’t shown up yet.  I soon found out that the following conversation had occurred:

Wife (to secretary):  Have you called the fire department?

Secretary:  I am still trying to find the number.

Wife:  Ummmm...how about 911?

When the fire department arrived, the put on their oxygen, went in and got out the dryer and put out the fire with no problems at all.

Yesterday, my wife and I were watching television and the power went out.  There was the sound of a big electrical arc outside and a bright, white light.  There is a transformer across the street rom my house, so I assume that it had blown.  When the arc didn’t stop, I looked outside.

The power to my house runs across the street to a pole in my yard, then to my house.  Years ago, someone planted a tree to hide the pole.  Apparently, over the years, the tree had rubbed the insulation off the wire.  When we had a little rain yesterday, the wire arced to the ground wire and burned through.  The arc I was seeing was between the stub end of the wire and the tree.

Since the tree was beginning to smolder, I called the fire department while my wife called the power company.  THe arc continued for about 5 minutes until the switch finally tripped.  Fortunately, the tree only moldereda nd never caught fire.  The fire department hung around until the power guy got there just in case something went wrong.

Like I said, I have been spending too much time with firemen lately.