When you think of home fire hazards, does your refrigerator come to mind?
I was hanging out in the living room with the kids this afternoon. We’d had a fun play date with a friend in the morning, come home for lunch, and were reading some books when I smelled something burning. I checked every other appliance in the house before I saw smoke coming out of the top of our encased refrigerator.
I called the fire department, who told me to pull out the fridge and unplug it. It was way too heavy. They said they’d send somebody out. I went and shut off the power for the house (probably should have done that first…)
We had two cop cars and two fire engines here within minutes. Emma and Johnny were thrilled to see the firemen and policemen, but they were too shy to talk to them. Everyone was really nice. They were pretty shocked that our fridge caught fire – apparently that really doesn’t happen much. The fridge – a gorgeous stainless steel KitchenAid that came with the house - was manufactured in June 2003, so it’s not like we were operating a dinosaur.
Mike called KitchenAid, and they said they would come pick it up and repair it, but that we’d have to pay for any labor costs and the earliest they could get it fixed by was two weeks. They said if we wanted a new fridge we could choose from a list of models and they would reimburse 15%. We couldn’t live without a fridge for two weeks, so my minivan fund became reassigned as fridge fund. Guess I’ll have to start researching how to fit three carseats across the backseat of a car again.
The good news is that I was home when the fire started. It was a proper open-flame fire, so it could have easily destroyed our kitchen (remodeled last year) or even the house.
I called both Home Depot and Lowe’s to find out how long it would take to deliver a new fridge. Home Depot said they couldn’t deliver before next Thursday. Lowe’s said they’d try for Saturday and would definitely make it by Sunday. Guess where we bought our new fridge?
