StrutStopper
Member
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2011
- Messages
- 636
First, sorry for the long post. Second, if I didn't know the people this happened to I would have a hard time believing this, I'd probably call this BS. I hunt at a property owned by someone I used to work with. All I have is his email address. I have been trying to contact him for several weeks via email. He lives over an hour a way and I hadn't tried to catch him at home yet. I finally got hold of him the other day. He apologized for not getting back to me sooner, but he had a house fire and had been dealing with that since the beginning of the month.
I drove there today. There was a trailer set up for his family to live in while the house gets restored. His wife was there when I got there. I asked her what happened. I couldn't believe her answer. Apparently my friends brother gave him about 15 pounds of gun powder for reloading about 10-15 years ago. It never got used. Sorry, I don't know what kind of powder it was. Their daughter just got out of the shower in the room next to where this powder was stored. She heard a WOOOOSH sound and came out of the bathroom to find the place in flames. It started where the old powder was stored.
Luckily, they were able to keep the fire down for a few minutes with an extinguisher and the fire dept responded in about 5, but there was some serious damage. I saw the spot where the powder was kept and the floor all around it charred, the rest of the place sustained heat and smoke damage. They were lucky they were home and someone got on this almost immediately or the place would have been a total loss. The BIL had some more of this powder at his home, he dumped it outside and lit it off. I'm sure he didn't know it would have made good fertilizer.
There was no other suspected cause of this fire than spontaneous combustion of this old gun powder. Has anyone heard of old un-stable gun powder just going up like this? I've got probably 20 pounds of powder in the next room and I'm sure many of you have more than that. After hearing this, I'm going to make sure it all gets used or at least smelled now and again if it sits for a few years. Green grass beats a burned home!
I drove there today. There was a trailer set up for his family to live in while the house gets restored. His wife was there when I got there. I asked her what happened. I couldn't believe her answer. Apparently my friends brother gave him about 15 pounds of gun powder for reloading about 10-15 years ago. It never got used. Sorry, I don't know what kind of powder it was. Their daughter just got out of the shower in the room next to where this powder was stored. She heard a WOOOOSH sound and came out of the bathroom to find the place in flames. It started where the old powder was stored.
Luckily, they were able to keep the fire down for a few minutes with an extinguisher and the fire dept responded in about 5, but there was some serious damage. I saw the spot where the powder was kept and the floor all around it charred, the rest of the place sustained heat and smoke damage. They were lucky they were home and someone got on this almost immediately or the place would have been a total loss. The BIL had some more of this powder at his home, he dumped it outside and lit it off. I'm sure he didn't know it would have made good fertilizer.
There was no other suspected cause of this fire than spontaneous combustion of this old gun powder. Has anyone heard of old un-stable gun powder just going up like this? I've got probably 20 pounds of powder in the next room and I'm sure many of you have more than that. After hearing this, I'm going to make sure it all gets used or at least smelled now and again if it sits for a few years. Green grass beats a burned home!