Seems like we may need a laugh about now, even if you end up laughing at me.         You’re welcome.

Despite what Billy Joel would have us all believe, it turns out that I, in fact, did start the fire.

Some background: After 3 eventful years as a Product Manager for GSK Migraine products, living in Cary, North Carolina, I returned to my real love, the sales force, as a Regional Sales Director in the Midwest. We moved the family to the Indianapolis area to set up shop. Anybody relocating to the Indy area is automatically funneled by Real Estate agents to the Carmel area. Carmel boasts the highest per capita income in the state, has top-tier schools, and is a mainstay on lists of best places to live in America. Sports and Arts are religion here and success is assumed. There have been many times when Carmel has won the State Championship in both Football and Basketball in the same year. Other sports are also ridiculously successful. In fact, Carmel owns the longest State Championship win streak in the country: the Girls Swim team has cake-walked (cake-swum?) to 33 straight annual titles (google it!). To many, it is an idyllic community, but to Jean and me, it was kind of creepy. Lots of former high school captains and prom queens (and that was just the men!), it was a bit too self-absorbed, a bit too polished. It seemed a Stepford community. So we coerced the real estate agents into showing us properties in nearby towns, but, alas, it gets pretty rural outside of Indy very quickly. We had to admit that Carmel was a good choice for the family.

So we bought a nice new spec home and had to applaud the builders for trying to save trees on the property, but one large tree was just too close to the house to survive the digging of the foundation. It was a Tulip tree that is native to Indiana and grows at an extremely fast rate. (In fact, my daughter Lauren brought home a tulip tree seedling one year and within 10 years it was over 30 feet tall, our most successful planting ever). This particular dead tree (seen here with 2 cuties hanging out) was easily 30 feet tall with sturdy branching. It was only about 5 feet from our house and owned space right where a proper patio should be. It had to go. The developer told me he would take it down when he got a chance, but one weekend I found myself at home with little to do. Jean had taken most of the kids up north to see her family, so Johnny and I were stuck at home. I could do this, I thought. I had experience with a chainsaw, having cut down a few tall dead elm trees when we lived in northwest Indiana some 4 years ago (thanks You-Tube). I was, still am, amazed at how precisely you can have a tree fall, as long as you make the right cuts. I expanded my experience after Hurricane Fran hit North Carolina in 1996. 10 trees were knocked over on our property, with 5 settling on my house. The Attack of the Trees. It took some time, but I cut them all up. There is something quite satisfying about using a chainsaw. (Cue Tim Allen and his macho grunts in that Tool Guy show)

Anyway, I decided to trim a few of the larger branches, even pulling my car around the back, tying the branches that threatened my house to the rear bumper. Not textbook tree work, but one does what one can. Eventually, I trimmed enough to feel confident that I could drop the tree where I needed. Surprisingly, all went well and I spent a few hours cutting up the trunk and large branches. Proud of myself, I gathered my tools and went into the

garage to put them away. The nylon ropes I used were now frayed, so I took out a lighter wand to melt the ends together. One end done, I dropped it to the floor while pulling on the rope to access the other end. My 2-gallon gas can, which I used to fuel the chain saw, was sitting on the workbench, and unfortunately, the rope was wrapped around it. Things progressed quickly, but seemingly in slow motion:

I pulled on the rope and the can came crashing down on the floor. Ugh!

The gas spurted out as the puddle made its way to the other end of the rope on the floor. Ugh!!

The end of the rope was still smoldering and was enough to catch the gas on fire. Ugh!!!!

No problem, I thought, I have a fire extinguisher! I ran into the kitchen and came back with a standard home fire extinguisher (1.25 gallons I now know). I’d never used an extinguisher before, but I dutifully pulled the pin, turned it over, and pressed the lever. The stupid thing sprayed for literally 3 seconds and was done. It did absolutely nothing. By then the fire had grown considerably. We had recently moved in, but I could not find any moving blankets or tarps in the garage to use to smother the fire. Then I noticed that my larger 5-gallon plastic gas can, which I knew was almost full, was sitting about a foot away from the fire, under my workbench. The fire blocked my access to the can. Things were turning from bad to worse so I went into the house to call the fire department and to get Johnny out of the house. Upon my return to the garage, the fire was impressive. It was a 3-car garage with one double door and one single. The single was closed, and I clearly remember pressing the garage door opener switch on the wall as I made the fateful decision to close the larger door. I held my breath as I hoped that the GDO still worked; it did; but it was painful to watch the garage door closing as I also shut the door from the garage into my house.

I turned around and ran right into my next-door neighbor who had spotted the smoke and came in through the back. He happened to be moving out of his house due to relocation for work. The moving men had taken all his possessions, but they wouldn’t take his paint cans and A LARGE FIRE EXTINGUISHER, which he held outright for me to take. Saved!

I turned back to the door but before we opened it I felt for warmth. About a month before this ordeal, I had seen the movie Backdraft. In this movie, each fire is imbued with a personality of sorts and it was there that I learned about the power of a backdraft. When a confined fire eats up most of the oxygen available, a powerful backdraft of pressure can occur if a new source of oxygen is introduced. Only because of this movie did I put my shoulder against the metal fire door (the people who put building codes together know what they are doing) as I turned the doorknob. It was as if there were ten guys in the garage pushing on the door to get it open! I could actually hear the fire roar as it screamed for more air! I struggled mightily to keep it from slamming open. My large neighbor reached up behind me and we both pushed as hard as we could until finally getting it closed. I also turned the deadbolt. We just looked at each other with wide eyes, shrugged in unison, then looked down at the useless fire extinguisher sitting on the floor.

The sirens from the firetrucks snapped us out of it, and we ran through the kitchen down the hallway out the front door to flag them down. The fire station is less than a mile away and they were at my house in a flash. And I was lucky enough to have a fire hydrant sitting on the corner of my property. My luck ran out though when the lead fireman told me that he didn’t have the right hose adapter for my hydrant. What?!? He called the station to tell them to bring the right one. How could this be!?!

As he told me the bad news, we watched and heard the windows on the garage cracking and the steel doors buckling. I filled him in on the cause of the fire and he took notes.

Finally, another truck arrived, and they hooked up the fire hose. Much to my surprise, they did not break one of the garage windows or open the outer garage door. Instead, they ran with the hose through my front door, down the hallway, into the kitchen, and let the beast loose by opening the interior door I had barricaded. I wasn’t witness to the opening of the door because of course, they did not let me in the house, but I can tell you that black smoke infiltrated my house and billowed out of the front door. It took little time for them to control the fire, which they said was very hot but smoldering due to lack of oxygen. They told me that I had probably saved my house by closing the garage doors when I did. My very sooty house. Soot from the fire coated the garage of course, but also the entire first floor and some areas of the second floor, and even the finished basement. The firemen left all at once and with little fanfare, and Johnny and I were left to survey the damages.

Evidently, the fire smoldered in the garage, got very hot, but did not spread far. Many plastic things had melted, and everything had a thick coating of soot. I’m amazed that I don’t have pictures.

My wife was driving home with the rest of our family, so I called her to avoid the surprise of a burned-out garage in our new house. She was not happy. To this day she cannot understand why I cut down the tree when the developer said he’d take care of it. I have no defense.

So, the next step is to call the insurance company and I have to tell you that the experience was surreal. They were phenomenal to work with. They immediately dispatched Restoration specialists who spared no expense to address the soot permeating the house. Then two young adjusters visited the next day, and it was as though they received a percentage of whatever they deemed as a loss. My garage was packed and virtually everything in it was cataloged as a loss because of the soot. So many perfectly fine things that could have been saved with a little cleaning. I understand that they were later cleaned and donated.

Suffice it to say that the insurance company went above and beyond in my book, and it’s the reason I stay with Allstate despite higher rates. All told, this little bonfire cost the insurance company over  $50,000.

The family stayed in a hotel for a few days and we ate all our meals out. We turned it into a mini-vacation but I’m not thinking that Jean enjoyed it all that much. Oh, and we made the paper! Here is how the Indianapolis Star reported our little adventure:

Three lessons:

1. Next time someone volunteers to handle a household task, you can bet that I will take them up on it.
2. I put large fire extinguishers throughout the house
3. I now have an electric chainsaw.

As always, thanks for reading. Stay safe and sane.

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