We had our first BBQ of the year this afternoon. My boyfriend has done them at my house for many years with no issues.
He cleaned out the BBQ as he normally would after it had all cooled down this evening before he went back to his. He put the cold ashes in to the wheelie bin using his bare hands.
Some hours later I randomly decided to open my patio door as I put some new solar lights out earlier today and wanted to take a look at the lighting (FYI they are crap, what a waste of money!). I spotted a friendly cat which one of my cats likes to say hello to. I went outside to call my cat out, and thought something smelled a bit funny. I looked down the side of the house, only to find the bloody bin on fire. I rang 999 as it was a pretty big fire by that point. I did use the extinguisher that I bought when we got the BBQ and chiminea last year as I'm a bit of a worry wart like that. Unfortunately the fire was too much and the extinguisher ran out. So I just got the kids out of their beds and we stood in the front garden and the fire brigade attended.
But bloody hell. My mind is racing at how fate took me outside. I never go outside at night. I would have gone to bed none the wiser at all. It doesn't bear to think about the possibilities.
My boyfriend is horrified. He is coming to fix everything tomorrow, bringing his own wheelie bin to replace mine until a new one arrives. Poor guy is mortified. He can't believe he could pick ashes up with his bare hands and yet it still started a fire. He did say he normally doused it with water and left it for a while, but as it had gone cold he thought it would be fine.
This is our second life threatening emergency in 2 months. I'm feeling pretty stressed out with it all! In Feb half term my 8 year old undid the gas pipe in the meter box unbeknownst to everyone else, and we had gas coming in to the house. It was only by sheer luck again that it was noticed. My aunt arrived at my house to babysit whilst I went to work. She took one step in and could smell gas really strongly. We couldn't smell anything. It was only when I went out and came back in that you could smell it so strongly. The emergency gas engineer came and fixed it straight away. But any normal day, that could have been my eldest teenage son left sleeping in it, or my boyfriend with my kids in there etc. No one would have known because you couldn't smell anything and my son didn't realise he had done something dangerous (he has adhd and autism).
It's at times like this I wish I drunk alcohol! I can't switch off and sleep with all these thoughts in my head right now!