What was the cause of the fire?

The only fire that I know about personally (neighbor down the street) was caused by a short circuit of some type in the wiring of a power outlet, in the little box in the wall. What they found is that the owner had done some re-wiring and added to the connections in the box, and hadn’t done it right.

Anyway over time something had loosened, and eventually wires touched and fire started. Everyone got out, but that half of the house was pretty well destroyed. Insurance fixed everything, and they moved back in 4–5 months later.

^^This is a big one, loose connections arc and start fires. Lots of them. One burned in my neighborhood recently from this. It was added to the electrical code just last year to include ACFI protection for that reason. They nuisance trip at times when certain appliances confuse them but it’s much better than having a fire.
I recently went around my early 1970’s era home and replaced the 50 year old outlets. Found some stuff that was a little scary. Light fixtures and switches are next.

Fire at a local restaurant was found to have started under the stainless steel counter-top that the hot fajitas platters were placed on before being placed on the wooden servicing trays.
Pyrolysis turned the wood under the counter into carbon over a long time, the restaurant closed one night and the carbon was smoldering which then broke out to flames, burned down the interior of the restaurant.

August 2017, I lost my home to a fire.

I live in an urban townhouse community. One of my neighbors is a high-level hoarder. His unit was filled with floor-to-ceiling stacks of books and papers, with old extension cords beneath the stacks. An electrical fire happened, and the entire building was destroyed.

Yes, we rebuilt; I moved back a year later. Yes, the hoarder also returned; amazingly, there was no legal authority to ban him. The city’s fire marshall and the homeowners association are doing frequent inspections and keeping a close watch.

@dutchess_III. I know you like a good mystery, so here ya go:
In Fayetteville, WV Christmas Eve, 1945, a mom and dad and their 9 children went to bed. A fire broke out around 1 a.m. The mom and dad and four of the kids escaped. Five kids did not, aged 5–14. The fire department didn’t get there until 8 a.m. By that time, the house had burned to the ground. The fire was determined to have been from faulty wiring. There were no bones, no teeth, nothing left of the 5 kids. The parents think the kids were kidnapped.

Lightning strike
House next door when I was a kid. They were out of town and by the time the FD got there, it was totaled.

A month ago the mother of my friend died from complications after her house burned to the ground.
She was rescued by a teacher coming home from work, but alas…

The investigators said it was due to a “wall wart” (charger) that must have shorted and started overheating setting nearby materials on fire. The electrical breaker did not trip because the current was likely well below 15 amps.

In the 1970s, a house arond the corner went up when the gas water heater exploded. A connection had gotten loose and leaked gas, by th etime enough gas had accumulated at the ground level to reach the height of the pilot, BOOM!. Blew out the window in the garage, fire spread to half the house in just a few minutes.

@luckyguy I had my drill on charge in the basement. I was down there messing around one day and saw a black streak up the wall where the charger was. Apparently it had over heated within the wall, but never caught on full blown fire. I don’t leave anything on charge unless I’m right there anymore.

While we are on the subject, if you have one of these power strips get a replacement through the recall. Look for them in your house today. I can’t tell you how many I have found. They were widely used in IT and sold with computer systems 15–20 years ago.

I do know a couple other stories and both are from chimney fires. The first was christmas morning in my neighborhood when I was about 16. A family had just finished moving into their house and decided to have a fire while they opened presents. I’ll never forget watching how high the flames went. Horrifying, I felt so bad for them. It was a total loss but they were all ok. It was a prefab fireplace, one of the early ones from the 1980s when builders stopped putting real ones in. They typically only have a 15 year lifespan and this one had not been inspected. Previous owner used those “wax fire logs” and creosote had built up and caught fire.
The other was a coworker, wood stove broke through the chimney and into the attic. All ok but again a total loss. He did not rebuild but somehow used the insurance settlement to go back to school.

“Feed & Grain” store, they had day old chicks, bee equipment, feed for calves and small farm equipment. Their front porch where you walked in to the front of the store had a soda machine, people would throw a quarter in and get a soda before going in to shop.
One Saturday night the refrigerator’s compressor for the soda machine overheated, burned the feed & grain side of store to the ground.

And a friend of a friend…

He was an early adopter and got a “flat screen” TV before anyone else. But….
Apparently after a few months the internal power supply got hot and melted the plastic TV housing eventually catching the set on fire. The smoke damage was substantial.

When I was in high school I worked for a dry cleaner and would sometimes do bulk pickup when insurance settled house fires. We would go to the house after the fire pickup and clothing, linens or blankets and attempt to clean them. About half were from clothes dryers according to the owner of the company.

My grandparents lost their house to an electrical fire when I was around 12 years old.

When I hear of house fires I have this hope/expectation/assumption that the victims did something wrong that I would never do. The fire was their fault.

I now know better. Stuff just happens and that fire could just as easily burned my home.
I am way more charitable now.

(I’m still not very sympathetic for the people building multi-million dollar second homes on the coasts or in fire-prone forests.)

We have a neighbor a couple doors up and across the road whose house was hit by lightning which caused a fire in his attic. By the time the fire was put out his ceiling was on the floor throughout the house and all his rafters needed to be replaced. No one injured, though.

My brother had a pot bellied stove that caught fire in the chimney. He wasn’t home and his house burned to the ground.

@chyna Those are scary, and flu fires.

There are a lot of ticking time bombs in old construction just waiting to burn down houses. There is also a lot of cheap electronics that’ll do the same. It’s very hard to guard against.

@Chyna, Your story reminded me of this true story. I saw it on Netflix not 2 months ago.

Holy smokes you guys!

When I was in HS in the 70s my family went to the lake. I decided to stay home I was on the phone with by boyfriend. After a while I realized there was an almost imperceptible haze in the house. I finally tracked it down to the base. I did the exact wrong thing and went down to check it out.
Dad had been using his soldering iron. He had forgotten to unplug it. Mom had dumped a bunch of old rags from a shelf above onto it. It was starting to flame. The washer was right there. I started it then grabbed those burning rags and dumped them into it and ran a load! I unplugged the soldering iron.
Then I started to worry what Mom was going to say when she came home to such a nasty mess in her washing machine.
What do you know. She never said a word about it.

If I hadn’t stayed home I imagine the house would have suffered some substantial damages.