Saturday, January 13, 2007 - Pour on Water

So Elina invited friends around this evening for dinner, she decided to make Coq au vin and flambe the chicken in brandy this morning.
My contribution??.................. putting the fire out and calling Santa Monica Fire Dept.

Elina flambed the chicken with brandy, when she did so a mesh filter in the extractor hood caught fire, which I tried to smother with a towel, meantime this spread upwards into the cupboards and I did not realize at first that the flames had set fire to some cereal boxes in the cupboards.
I opened the cupboards and a pretty large fire had engulfed the cupboards and cabinets setting fire to the varnish on them etc.
I threw water on the cereal boxes while Elina got the kids out, the fan mesh and electronics were plastic and created a lot of black smoke. I opened the windows and turned a fan on to get rid of the smoke, then the fire dept came and checked the fire had not spread through any ventilation or onto the roof.

All in all a quick reminder of how quickly you can go from a normal morning to being minutes away from losing your possesions or even worse.