You might say, our house was saved by a leaky trash bag. Upon returning to the house after taking the offending bag outside and disposing of it, I smelled smoke. It was the soft, powdery type smoke, similar to snap firecrackers thrown on the ground in large quantities. My husband, Nathan, quickly identified the odor as electronics burning. Statue Dog decided to lay around and made no effort to use his super sniffer to track down the offensive piece of hardware, so Nathan and I sniffed around ourselves. We landed upstairs in the office sniffing at hard drives and wifi hardware. They were warm, but did not have a burned power supply odor. As Nathan unplugged everything, just to be safe, the floor lamp across the room crackled and shot off a light display like 4th of July sparklers. With some quick communication, Nathan went to get the fire extinguisher and I yanked the power cord. Fortunately, the smoke and light show ended once the power was removed.

As you can see in the photo, the florescent bulb appears to have lost its head. The capacitor is cracked and several wires are burned off the circuit board.

Popped and burned out florescent light bulb.

We are still curious why the florescent light bulb burned up like it did. The lamp said to use a 150W bulb *or* a smaller 120v 60Hz bulb. The florescent was only about 24W, but it was 120v 60Hz as recommended.

Another mystery was why the smoke detector didn’t go off. As it turns out, there are two types of smoke detectors, photoelectric & ionization. We have the typical ionization smoke detector, which have a small advantage over photoelectric detectors when there is a flaming fire, but the photoelectric detectors work best for smoldering fires. When the particles from the smoldering fire cause the light beam in the photoelectric detector to refract the alarm will go off. About.com has an excellent article on “How Do Smoke Detectors Work”.

What should you do if there is an electrical fire? Assess the situation and use your own good common sense. If you are dealing with a puff of smoke and there are no additional safety issues, like water or frayed wires, unplug the offending appliance or turn off the main circuit breaker in the house. Make sure you keep a class C (electrical) or ABC fire extinguisher in the house. Do not use water or any other type of extinguisher for electrical fires. It will make the fire worse and hurt you. If unplugging the appliance is unsafe or the fire is beyond a puff of smoke, call 911. Get you, your family and pets to safety immediately. Small fires can turn into big fires quickly.

How can you prevent your household electrical based equipment from turning into a possible electrical fire? Turn it off when you are not using it and follow home fire prevention measures.

Additional Fire Prevention Information:

• Be Fire Smart
• Fire hats and coloring books to teach fire saftety
• Basic Fire Safety & Escape Plans: Video Series
• Another florescent light story by @lectroidmarc.