That Time Our Base Housing House Almost Caught On Fire

All the fire alarms went off. The cats were darting around the house in a panic. Tommy came down the stairs wanting to know what was going on. "Are you cooking?" he asked, hands over his ears. This is because the fire alarms have gone off when I was cooking before. Many, many times.

Then Security Forces came to the door.

"We saw smoke pouring out of your house."

But let me back up.

This is what happened: I went into the kitchen. I pre-heated the oven for the garlic bread. I walked away. I read a chapter of my book. Fine, two chapters. I went back in the kitchen and saw smoke wafting out of the oven.

"Huh," I said, because I didn't know what was happening. My caffeine had worn off at that point. I thought maybe it was the fry that fell to the bottom of the oven last week. I had been meaning to sweep away the charred remains. I opened the oven and...

Source

That's not my photo because I was in a panic. The fire basically looked like that. I started to run around the kitchen like ET--arms raised up and everything.

"Fire!" I screamed. "Fire!"

I opened the cabinet and tugged out the fire extinguisher. At this point Tom had run in because when someone keeps shouting "fire," you check it out.

The house was filling with smoke. The fire alarms went off. All of them. It was what I imagine a club to sound like.

Tom turned on the fire extinguisher and got the fire out. But the house was still filled with smoke.

"Are you cooking?" Tommy boomed. He does not like loud noises. He went back upstairs to his room and slammed the door before I could respond.

Security Forces came to the door. "We saw smoke pouring out of your house."

This is because we opened all the doors and windows.

We were asked if we wanted them to call the fire department. No, we answered. We got the fire out. But thank you.

Then I had to call base housing to report what happened. Two guys came out to take photos of the oven. Probably to charge us $13290824308 if we don't clean it properly.

So what happened, you might be asking? What caused the oven to catch on fire?

Well. Natalie had put wax candles in it. They were in the shape of cookies. Apparently she was pretending to cook earlier. I mean, she has a PRETEND kitchen so why she felt the need to put crap in the REAL oven is beyond me.

This is all that remains of her cookie candles:

We reminded her that the oven was NOT to play with. Do NOT place things in it. Ever.

This is what the oven looked like:

It took forever to scrub the wax away. Tom took care of the rest.

The moral of this story is always check the inside of the oven BEFORE you pre-heat it.

(And yes, the irony did not escape me because on Monday I wrote that one reason why my kids weren't getting a hoverboard was because I was worried it was going to burn down the house. It turns out, one of my kids nearly did that anyway..)