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House fires - please read !!!!!

John Bolton

Cleantalker Veteran
This is not directly cleaning related but probably affects most of us:


Received from a friend who is in the insurance property business. It is well worth reading.

This is one of those e-mails that if you don't send it, rest assured someone on your list will suffer for not reading it. The original message was written by a lady whose brother and wife learned a hard lesson this past week.

Their house burnt down.. nothing left but ashes. They have good insurance so the house will be replaced and most of the contents. That is the good news.

However, they were sick when they found out the cause of the fire. The insurance investigator sifted through the ashes for several hours. He had the cause of the fire traced to the master bathroom. He asked her
sister-in-law what she had plugged in the bathroom. She listed the normal things....curling iron, blow dryer. He kept saying to her, 'No, this would be something that would disintegrate at high temperatures'. Then her sister-in-law remembered she had a Glade Plug-In, in the bathroom.

The investigator had one of those 'Aha' moments. He said that was the cause of the fire. He said he has seen more house fires started with the plug-in type room fresheners than anything else. He said the plastic they are made from is THIN. He also said that in every case there was nothing left to prove that it even existed. When the investigator looked in the wall plug, the two prongs left from the plug-in were still in there.

plugin.jpg
This photo was taken at the scene of a house fire that occurred over the weekend

Her sister-in-law had one of the plug-ins that had a small night light built in it. She said she had noticed that the light would dim and then finally go out. She would walk in to the bathroom a few hours later, and the light would be back on again. The investigator said that the unit was getting too hot, and would dim and go out rather than just blow the light bulb. Once it cooled down it would come back on. That is a warning sign


The investigator said he personally wouldn't have any type of plug in fragrance device anywhere in his house. He has seen too many places that have been burned down due to them.
 

Trevor Ives

Cleantalker Veteran
I would not have any anyway. Most of my family are allergic to the fumes given off, they give me a headache in two minutes flat that progresses to nausea.
If there are any in the room I unplug them and either put them outside or in a cupboard if the house is empty. For a few times I was surprised on how hot they were, I am now wary of getting hold of them.
If people had their carpets cleaned and cleaned elsewhere a bit more often and opened a window occasionally they would not need them.
 

John Dane

Cleantalk Member
There's the 2 prongs to prove it existed.
Why would it dim and go out rather than blow the bulb?
Why didn't it dim then go out again rather than melt?
Why didn't it blow at the fuse box?
What could possibly burn that devastatingly in a bathroom?
Why was there a plug in the bathroom in the first place?
Why did it take the investigater several hours to discover the cause of the blaze/

John
 

John Dane

Cleantalk Member
" The house burned down, nothing left but ashes "
Yet this interior wall and the pipework seem intact.
And the artex on the walls seems basically intact with hardly any smoke damage, not exactly what you'd expect in a house that was reduced to ashes.
Why would the insurance investigater sift through the ashes, why not just ask the Fire Service, it's these people that decide the cause of the fire not the insurance people.

John
 

John Bolton

Cleantalker Veteran
John,

Beneath the picture it says:
This photo was taken at the scene of a house fire that occurred over the weekend
The photograph is of a separate incident to that described in the text.

PS.

Re. your earlier question, the two prongs arr still in the socket, behind the charred remains of the device.
 

John Dane

Cleantalk Member
OK John.
Still doesn't answer some of the points.

Plugs in the bathroom, that's plural.
Presuming the bathroom was upstairs I find it unusual that the house would totally burn down from a fire there.
Sorry for questioning your friends integrity it's just that there's a lot that doesn't add up.
Especially as there still selling them with a known fault.

John
 
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