Setting the house on Fire....

Been so busy I haven't had time to post a couple of things that happened to my life recently..Well, here is one of them..


A few weeks back while I was preparing to move to a new apartment, I set my current apartment on fire. Well, not exactly the kind of fire you see on TV where the whole place burns up, but it was significant enough to remind me to always check what's on the bottom of my pots before I place them onto the stove.

You see, it was late night and I realise that I needed food. So I popped 2 frozen Roti Canai (some kind of bread) onto a pan hoping to heat it up nice enough to eat. Without bothering too much on the task, I placed the pan on the stove, light it up and then went back to my internet game (Webdota, if you haven't noticed).

A couple of minutes later I smelt something burning and looked behind me. Yes, my kitchen stove and my PC was less than 7 metres away. To my horror, a fire of about 3 feet was burning right out of my frying pan. Now, in most instances such a fire would not happen, as the pan has been used on that stove a million times before. Yet this time the fire was no joke. What they say about the smoke being worse than the fire is true too. The thick black smoke was really scary.

My first thought was to disconnect the gas from the stove, starving the fire of fuel. But it kept burning. I moved all the flammable items around it to avoid burning up more things, but that pan looks like a real fiery mess. Shouting fire wasn't something I thought I'd ever do for real, but that night I shouted fire alright. The rest of my family came out to see and no one was laughing at the fire..Suffice to say it didn't look like stopping.

Luckily the stove was next to the sink, so ample water source was available. However, I guess I panicked and worried that dousing it with water would cause an explosion of sorts, so it took my mom to actually interfere and douse the fire with a spalsh of water..

That was it. One splash and the fire died. Rather anticlimax, I'd say, but really, I'm glad it ended prematurely. Else I'd had to move out sooner than expected, with a fraction of the possesion since they'd all be burnt already. With the fire gone, we noticed a ring of burnt plastic around the stove. I basically placed the pan which was resting on a plastic potholder which stuck to the bottom when I placed it over the stove. It got burnt to ashes and the pan is now as black as charcoal.

Over the next hour or so the black smoke blew away, leaving the conditions at home back to normal, if you don't miss the stove and the pan...

Life lesson - Always make sure it's just the pot/pan you're placing over the stove before you start the fire. Else, gas isn't the only thing fueling your fire.....