oops.....I really didn't mean to start that on fire.....

You most likely got a hint from the title I kinda started an oil fire....again I'm going to have to say oops! Here's the story:

About 10am Monday, November 30, 2009

I'm taking the lid off of a small saucepan of boiling vegetable oil and moving it away when the oil went up in a burst of flames. I screamed when the wave of heat hit me. My sister 'Becca ran over and splashed water on a paper towel that had caught on fire but some of it hit the oil and up goes another burst. My grandma and grandpa then came running over because they heard me scream I guess. Grandma tells us to get out of the kitchen so we go into the dining room to wait for mom who then comes running over and grandma goes to call the fire department. By then my brother J.J. had come around the corner and saw the fire. Once he saw it he started crying right away thinking that he was going to die. He has gotten himself all worked up now and grandpa is putting salt on the oil which makes it flame up again. We finally get J.J. outside and try to calm him down when up drives our neighbor Mr. Bell, a firefighter, who got the message over his walkie talkie and came over to help. He asks if the fire is out yet and we said last we knew it wasn't. He went in and helped grandpa, who had already gotten it out, into his room away from the smoke. I went back into the house to get something I don't remember what but as I was going back out I walked by Mr. Bell and this was our conversation:

Me: oops! (in a very innocent tone)

Mr. Bell: Is that your mess? (or something like that)

Me: yep! (with a little bit of a grin on my face)



Mr. Bell just shook his head and I walked by him. I head out to the barn where mom and 'Becca had taken J.J. and the dogs to wait until it was ok to go back into the house. Before Mr. Bell left he came over to the barn to check on J.J. because he had been crying when he got there and wanted to make sure he was ok. He was fine he had just gotten a little scared, but honestly I would have been to if I had been 9 and walked around the corner into the kitchen and found a pan of oil flaming, so I don't blame him for getting scared. After the fire department left we went back into the house and looked to see if anything much got burnt and thankfully not much was ruined. Only a cutting board, a small saucepan, part of a ceiling fan, and the cover to the clock on the stove warped. Three cupboard doors had to be refinished because they were right over the stove and they turned black because of the smoke and fire, but Grandpa had that done within a day. We had to wash down the whole first floor of the house because of the ash, but washing it made it smear so now we have to repaint the kitchen and dinning room walls and the kitchen ceiling because of the flames. Did you know that ash can get inside closed cabinets? We had to clean out every single one of them because of it. Which means we had to wash every single piece of mom's china, plus everything in all the other cabinets. But other then a lot of the cleaning and some painting nothing other then the few things I mentioned earlier nothing was really destroyed or anything like that. I will post pictures of before cleaning and after cleaning in a few days!

~Rachel~