Flashback

Our First week – You can’t Make this Stuff Up

Days after we closed on the house, Abby hired a company to install an invisible fence at our new house  to keep “her” dogs in the yard.

When an employee showed up to install it and he came into the house, Abby said, “You smell like gas”. “Ya”, he replied. “I spilled a can of gas inside my van.” Abby asked him how he was going to clean it up. Employee: “I’ll open the windows and let it evaporate”.

So he went outside and opened up the back of his truck to begin work. When he did, he found that his gloves were wet so he decided to take a cigarette lighter to them to “dry them off”. He must have had a small amount of fuel on his clothes because as he lit the lighter, his coat started on fire. Abby yelled “You’re on fire”. He looks down and realizes his coat is burning and then looks up to see that the gloves have turned into a ball of flame as well. I think it must have been at this point that he realized that the gloves were also on fire because, yes, you guessed it; they were wet because they were soaked in gas.

So he throws the gloves and manages to brush the fire away on his clothes. When he looks up, (this is the “Oh crap” moment) he realizes that the flaming gloves landed in the back of the van. Where the gas had spilled…

The fire department came and went into immediate action. The police blocked the street off in front of the house. It didn’t take long to knock the fire down. I dashed over from work and we were standing there wondering what the neighbors must be thinking of their “new” neighbors. First week in the neighborhood and we have a van burning in the driveway and the street blocked off. Great.

The owner came immediately and couldn’t have been better. While it was difficult for us it was even more difficult for him. He was so customer service oriented that when we’re done with construction, we’re going to have them finish the installation.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. The van was destroyed and the equipment inside was a total loss. Only the wires on our house were destroyed and a few plants singed along with a big mess to clean up. But, I don’t think this is going to go down as this employee’s best day at work.