Posted on 04/05/2010 11:19:38 AM PDT by sinanju
Around 3 a.m. Tuesday, a broken ventilation fan in an upstairs bathroom had overheated and caught fire. Myatt, whose room was in the basement of the house, doused the small fire with water and called Hawes to report the problem. Both agreed that as the fire was out, there wasn’t any cause for concern.
But at 6 a.m. Myatt awoke to a crashing boom and wailing smoke alarms. The booming sound was that of the fan falling out of the ceiling and hitting the floor after catching fire again.
Myatt jumped out of bed and rushed upstairs in her bare feet.
“I just saw flames all down the hallway and the bathroom door was on fire, because I hadn’t shut the bathroom door before this big fire, so there was no way to avoid the flames,” Myatt told Curry. “But before I had even looked at the fire or anything, I was yelling for Aden. He said he was in his room underneath the covers.”
To get to him, Myatt had to run through the burning carpeting with nothing on her feet.
“I didn’t even think about me getting hurt or getting burned,” Myatt said. “I really didn’t even think that I was barefoot. I was just yelling for Aden and I ran and got him. All of it happened really quick.”
“To physically run through flames is heroics to the nth degree,” Shelbyville Fire Chief Willard Tucker told The Courier-Journal newspaper. “To make a choice to charge right through flames is kind of above what are normal heroics.”
(Excerpt) Read more at today.msnbc.msn.com ...
I'm not the technical kind. I've never heard of bathroom or kitchen fans meant to run continuously. I gather such devices are controlled by a governor. I can easily understand if a fan ran out of control it would burn out its bearings and overheat (or something). Can anyone out there explain this a bit better?
We all hate to imagine being killed in our beds by common household appliances.
This is an MSNBC attempt to put a positive spin on the nanny state. (smile)
Could it have been that the initial fan fire ignited some cellulose insulation in the attic that smouldered and later caught fire?
It is odd, I can’t say I have ever heard of it either.
Here, for me, is a good case of someone needing health insurance. As a Nanny, her employers probably do not have a ‘Plan’ they pay for and depending on what she actually gets paid ... hope this working woman could afford it.
I have heard of it before— quite a lot, actually. Major cause is dust build up in the fan. Causes the motor to overheat.
“Could it have been that the initial fan fire ignited some cellulose insulation in the attic that smouldered and later caught fire?”
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I guess we have to assume it was blowing directly into the attic as it said “ceiling” and not “wall”.
“I have heard of it before— quite a lot, actually. Major cause is dust build up in the fan. Causes the motor to overheat.”
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I mean, it might make sense to have one that runs continuously as many bathrooms seem to stay continuously humid, but isn’t there someway to secure the power to one that is malfunctioning. I recall from basic Damage Control and Firefighting from the Nav that rule number one in an electrical fire is to turn off the power.
Far down in the article is the real reason the media covered the story: the nanny doesn’t have health insurance.
Well why doesn’t Obama deploy an army of household inspectors making mandatory annual checks of our bathroom fans?!!
I mean, doesn’t he care about us?
We narrowly avoided losing the building.
Well, I’ll say it then; Good for this brave woman. Hope she gets a parade.
Wow, God Bless her, she is a true hero.
Where were “Aden’s” parents at 6:00 a.m., and what kind of idiot name is that?
In super insulated houses which are very "tight," the bathroom fans can be used to ensure an appropriate amount of outdoor air exchange. This helps avoid "sick house syndrome."
According to one article, the father was away on a business trip and somebody alleging to be the mother claims Aden is not his child - though perhaps there was a misunderstanding here.
His dad’s a single parent (no details given) and he hired the nanny because he has to make regular business trips.
I know what you mean, but some of these fires did not involve continuously running fans.
I’m a little concerned about one of ours right now— the upstairs one has started to periodically make a bad noise when starting up. And I haven’t had a chance to try to vacuum the durn thing out (not easily accessible, it has a light/fan combination.
The downstairs bathroom one, is easier to get to, but my mother has refused to run it for the last several years because of a story of a bathroom fan starting a fire she’d heard on one of the morning “news” shows.
Actually, I’m surprised she even lets us use the clothes dryer... ;-)
I happened to see the interview of the Nanny, the kid and the Dad. Single Dad, traveling on business. The nanny was hired a few weeks before this as a live-in.
Can’t answer the other question...
Okay, that makes sense.
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