Sunday, November 25, 2007

"Heat from Stove Catches House on Fire"

This is odd.

From WOAI:

The fire started at a home on Pleasanton Road on the city's South side. Four young boys narrowly escape a fire in their home Saturday morning.

...

Investigators say it started when the four boys were using the stove to stay warm. Heat from the stove started a fire which prompted the boys to run next door.


That's gotta be an extraordinarily hot stove. In fact, I'm skeptical that mere heat put out by the stove actually caused the home to go up in flames. There must have been something else involved -- a fuel source that caught fire, an electrical short, something.

3 comments:

kmerian said...

I have been an insurance adjuster for about 10 years, and let me assure you, a stove can and will start a fire. First of all, it really needs to be a gas stove. If you have one, turn all the burners on full. Now, wait about 5 minutes and touch the cabinets above your stove. They will be very hot. Let this go on for about an hour and the cabinet will eventually spontaneously combust from the heat.

Albatross said...

Interesting. Thanks for the insight.

Virginia Advocates said...

I have to agree with the first statement, I don't believe for a second that a stove alone caused the fire. My mother used the over all the time to heat the kitchen and you just have to make sure nothing is on it. And what idiot would use the burners to warm the room?? Obviously the over turned on with the door opened would make it much warmer. As for that, what kind of parent leaves their kids alone in a cold house and doesn't teach them about dangers like that.
As for the cabinet, the heat from the stove may have made the fire but the cabinet would have been the fuel. So IF that was the case, then the cabinet was the fuel. Like I said, not just heat. And what idiot ever came up with the idea that a cabinet over the stove, especially a gas one, was a good idea? We need to stop building things that were thought to be intelligent a hundred years ago.