Sunday, February 6, 2011

When your furnace is engulfed in flames

We had a lovely vacation in Costa Rica.


We arrived home at 1:30 am this morning and were promptly in bed at 1:40.  At 5:02 am, we were awakened by the hard-wired fire alarm.  We live in a two family house, and there is a hardwired alarm, plus freestanding alarms upstairs.  Since the hardwired alarm meant that the fire could be anywhere in the house, we were running all over our apartment, my inlaws' apartment and the basement, trying to figure out where the fire was.  In the basement, we discovered our furnace was on fire.  


I suppose "engulfed in flames" is an exaggeration.  Technically, the exterior of the furnace was glowing cherry red, and something was on fire inside the furnace.  No, it was not the pilot light. Things were ON FIRE.  


We figured out which furnace was ours (two family house---separate furnaces---ours was the one on fire).  We turned off the gas, the fire died down, and we are waiting for PSE&G to come take a look at the furnace and inform us that it needs to be replaced.  I find it difficult to sleep when I think the house might burn down, so I am awake for the day.  


3 comments:

  1. Yikes! I hope it's not a big problem and easy to fix.

    ReplyDelete
  2. How scary! I guess if something like this had to happen, it's good it happened when you were home from vacation and could stunt the issue before things could have become worse. Hope it is a reasonably easy fix, too!

    ReplyDelete
  3. yes, this definitely was not fun :-)

    ReplyDelete

Yay! You're commenting! I love comments!