Fire! Fire!

We were on vacation at a resort on a lake this past week. Monday afternoon, Sprout came running into the room,

“Fire, Fire! Daddy has fire!”

I looked out on the deck of our rented lodge room and saw flames shooting up out of the grill as DH desperately tried to save our burgers he had just thrown on. He managed to pry the seared raw meat from the burnt tin foil, then unplugged the electric grill, and pulled it away from the building.

He came inside and said the grill was instant flames as soon as he turned it on. Before I even had a chance to suggest just frying the burgers, Sprout came running from the window and yelled,

“Fire, there’s fire!”

I looked out and saw an entirely engulfed grill with flames shooting ten feet in the air. Without words, DH ran for the extinguisher while I ran to the phone. I knew I had to plug it in since the boys had been playing with it. All my tunnel vision focused on getting the phone jack in the correct way and then pushing the front desk button. When the woman answered, I said, “The grill on our deck is on fire and fully engulfed.” She didn’t panic but very quickly said she was sending the manager. I hung up and ran out to the deck. DH was in the process of dousing the grill and the flames were mere smoke at that point.

Moments later, I heard loud steps in the hallway rumbling towards our door. I opened it to see two bulky men who were red faced and panic stricken, rushing towards me carrying fire extinguishers. I told them my husband had put it out and led them to the deck. Upon inspection, they agreed it wasn’t DH’s fault. The grill was just in desperate need of a cleaning and promised to bring us another one.

After some discussion of incident reports and the manager recounting how he saw the black smoke all the way from the lake, he apologized profusely and offered to buy us new burgers. We declined.

Here’s the boys watching as DH, the manager, and the maintenance man looked over the damage. The picture at the top is the grill after the fact, pushed back towards the building, and covered in extinguisher residue.

So the next day when we stopped at a store, guess which matchbox car Sprout picked out…

The End

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