Today was the craziest day of my life

So this morning I awoke to numerous fire alarms going off. I think "Oh, my mom probably burnt some toast or something," but it continued on for another minute so I figured I'd head downstairs to check it off. I was a little angry that I had to be jarred awake like that when I was trying to get some sleep to recover from my cold. I went downstairs and found my brother in the room with the woodstove. My brother is a LOT older than me and he had a car accident when he was sixteen that left him with a severe head injury for life. His reactions are very slow, his logic isn't quite straight, his short term memory is bad, etc. "What's going on?," I asked him. "It's okay, I just couldn't quite fit the piece in there." I didn't see any signs of a fire so I didn't think much of it and left the room. Luckily I passed by again 10 seconds later because when I looked in the vacuum cleaner was on fire. The front of it was off for some reason (I didn't have time to ask questions) and the bag had ignited. By the time I made it in there the fire was too big to simply stomp out or to carry the vacuum cleaner outside, so I had him put it up on the brick by the woodstove so it wouldn't catch any wood. Some embers fell out and were burning on our wood floor so I made sure we stomped these out.
Next thing I know the whole damn vacuum is on fire, and it falls in half. I looked for a bucket, a fire extinguisher.. anything, but my parents neglected to keep anything like that where it can be found easily. So I dashed for a phone and called my mom. Looking back I sounded pretty terrified in the phone call. I asked her where I could find a bucket for water and she told me and I told her to come home immediately and I hung up. When I went back into the room, it was dark as night and the smoke had formed a thick smoggy haze throughout the whole house. Luckily the fire was slowing down and I sped up this process with the water from the bucket.
I called my mom when the fire was all out and told her everything was okay. She told me she called 911 and the fire department would be there soon. She got there at the same time as them. They checked out the place and said it was good she called, there was a lot of soot damage and we'd need to call the insurance company. Soon the ambulance came and my brother and I were off to the ER for smoke inhalation. Any part of my body that was exposed during this ordeal was covered in soot, so I looked ridiculous, especially around my eyes where it looked like I was wearing mascara. Anyway I got checked out at the hospital and everything is alright but I've been coughing a lot today.
Apparently the cause of the fire was a spark shooting out when he opened the woodstove (which he's not supposed to be touching anyway) got into the bag of the vacuum. There's probably some pretty flammable stuff in there so it caught on fire fast. My parents said that if I hadn't been home we probably wouldn't have a home and my brother may have not made it out with his life, because he wouldn't have known what to do. While he did help put it out, I was the one giving all of the directions and forming a plan on how to do so, he was overwhelmed.
While I'm proud that I kept everyone safe and our house safe, It really fucking sucks that 80% of the stuff in my house has a coating of soot on it.

 

a vacuum was on fire? that is crazy

 

WOW!

Damn, baking powder works pretty good too. That is one of my big fears - house fire.

Glad you guys are alright.
B

 

yea glad u 2 are ok

the part that 80% of ur house is coated with soot made me laugh though

 

well it's not like a thick coat or anything. but you just see like little specs of black dust on EVERYTHING.

 

yeah man, that shit gets out of hand fast. the other day i fell asleep with a candle still lit and woke up with a HUGE puddle of wax on my carpet... luckily its a cheap POS carpet and i just ironed it all off. it was crazy though, imagin what could have happened lol

 

recently, me and my friends were smoking weed and we went downstairs and a chicken had been left on the stove so long that it had not only burnt but all teh fat had like melted off the bottom of the chicken and copious amounts of chickensmoke was billowing off the pan throughout the whole house which smelled like burnt chicken for a few days.

nothing nearly as spectacular, but i have to say, scraping the soot and burnt chicken off the pan was horrible.

 

damn, glad yall are alright

 

lol bet u was ready for a spliff afta tht