Woke up the other morning at 3:00 am by the fire alarms blaring, inside the house fire alarms, I dont have one in the garage. The fire alarms inside the house went off with the amount of smoke coming through the garage door, there was a lot of smoke in the garage. When I opened the garage door, I was greeted with 5 foot flames coming from the garage floor. There was a pile of rags, other things from a plastic garbage can, the can had melted to the floor and was a pile of molten plastic producing black smoke. There was so much smoke that I was not sure I was going to be able to stay in there to fight the fire. I knew where my fire extinguisher was, a 10 lb bottle, I sprayed it at the fire, it lasted a short time and ran out, the fire was knocked down but not out, and was growing again. I hit the door opener and kicked the burning plastic outside, of course I had been woken up out of bed so no shoes, just a guy fighting a fire in my underwear, nice protective equipment. Now I have a giant blister on my foot. The fire was still going so I started filling up buckets of water in my sink to fight the fire, I am lucky to have a laundry sink in the garage, a few buckets and it was finally out.
I can tell you that was the closest I have came to burning the house down, I can see how it can happen. I am having a cover put over my deck and had been staining some boards, wiping off the excess stain with rags. I was not worried about the rags because I thought it was Linseed Oil that could auto ignite. Maybe the stain had a fair amount of Linseed Oil in it, it was a clear stain. Anyway, whatever it was, if you don't already know, be careful how you dispose of oily rags. It is one hell of a way to be woken up, I don't need to do that again.
I have been able to clean it up, I bought an ozone generator to help remove the smell, I thought it might be a gimmick, but it worked great. I ran it for 30 minutes, and that is all it took to remove the smell of fire and burnt plastic. I will have to paint the ceiling because it is a very dark color now, the lights no longer reflect anything, it is much darker in there. The back end of my lathe had some burn marks but some paint will fix that, and my miter saw cabinet almost caught fire, I was able to sand the damage and is good as new. I just ordered a smoke detector for the garage, it will alarm inside the house if there is smoke. I figure if I had a detector out there I could have fought the fire much sooner, and when it was much smaller. If you don't have a detector in the garage, you might think about putting one in, it could save a crucial amount of time, if a fire starts and you have to wait until enough smoke gets into the house to set off one of the house detectors.
I am feeling extremely lucky to have not lost the house, or at least the garage. If it had happened when I was not at home, I am sure it would have been lost. Sorry this was so long, but oily rags can be deadly.
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Originally Posted by Bill Dufour
