A 911 Lunch Call

This is the front of our house with some of the emergency vehicles.

I have not blogged in a while but today's lunch events are definitely blog-worthy.

Today Justin and I left work and headed home for lunch like we do everyday. However, today was a little different. When we walked into the house, we immediately noticed the smell of burning plastic along with a very faint haze. Justin's first response was "Oh no! The iron!" He ran in to the guestroom where we keep the iron, only to find it unplugged and cold. The next thought that went through my mind was "I left my straightener on!" Justin ran to our bathroom to find the straightener unplugged as well. At this point we were both a little nervous, as we had no idea was it was. I told Justin to call 911 and quickly got Jack in the backyard. While Justin was calling 911 he opened the attic to see if some was wrong up there. He couldn't find anything but the smell of plastic burning was still in the air. I waited outside for the fire department while Justin stayed in the house trying to find the cause of the smell.

When the fire department arrived Justin and I were grateful for two small "Fire and Rescue" trucks. We knew the house was not on fire and didn't want a big fire truck in front of our house scaring anyone. Well not long after the words were out of Justin's mouth, the big red fire truck pulls up behind the Rescue truck. Let me just say that if this was a real emergency, we would have left well taken care of. I am not sure how many guys were walking through the house trying to find the source of the smell but it was quite a few.

After about 15 minutes are so, they said the cause was probably a neighbor having a pipe repaired (they saw the plumber's truck outside their house) and apparently sometimes they put smoke into the pipes to see where the leak is and they said that the smoke must have been coming into our pipes. This made me feel better knowing that nothing was in flames but I still didn't like that our house smelled like something was burning. We were standing around while they finished up some paperwork when I asked Justin to turn the air on. He had turned the air off when we got home just in case it had to do with the smell. He turns it on but nothing happened. He opened the vent thing and the smell was very strong. One of the firefighter put his head into the hole and told another fire fighter to go and check the AC in the attic. After a few more minutes a fire fighter came in and told us what the cause of the smell was. He said the fan had overheated and caused a part to melt. The funny thing is that we just had that part replaced less than three weeks ago. The fire fighter assured us that everything was safe but that we did need to get someone out to fix our AC.

We are very grateful for the quick response of the Clinton Fire Department.

Check out these two pictures of the fire department working hard to keep us safe.