- Mar 3, 2009
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I live in a 2 story apartment, first floor is me, 2nd (& 3rd) is another group. They had a pretty crazy party on Saturday, which I attended. Towards the end of the night I remember that their power kept going out, and one of the guys going down there to 'fix' the fuse box. In the aftermath it turns out the guy upstairs who 'fixed' the fuse just pulled it out and rammed it back in like 8 or 9 times as hard as he could, and then left it.
Fast forward to 9:30AM Sunday morning, in the middle of a blizzard. I get woken up by my room mate in the cellar yelling FUUUCK at the top of his lungs. I rush down to the cellar and there is smoke EVERYWHERE. It's also pretty hot. We're looking around trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and we look in the corner towards the fuse boxes, and notice something glowing red, and dripping what looks like orange syrup. We get closer and the heat is unbearable. To my abject horror I realize that the orange glow is the main fuse at the top. The 'syrup' is the steel melting and dripping onto the floor. I shit you not. Oddly it was only part of the fuse that was melting, the rest would end up rather intact for some reason.
So at this point I notice the rafters and beams over the fuse box are charring, so I call the FD and they get out here within a couple minutes and try and take care of things. They take care of the beams, but they can't pull the fuse, since it has electricity going through it or something. They have one of those heat sensing cameras and sure enough it's hot enough to melt steel. They were all saying that they had never seen anything like this before. They call the electric company who come out and basically say they have to shut off power to our house, obviously. So they do that. Only problem is, our furnace needs electricity to spark. So no heat, no hot water, no electricity, in the middle of a blizzard. About this time I hear yelling upstairs and go up to my floor, where my room mate has blown out 3 discs in his back and needs to go to the ER. Crazy day.
Then the electrical inspector comes over and says that there's code violations all over with our electricity and he may have to condemn the house. I'm on the phone with the land lord the whole time, and he has his electrician & his assistant come over, and they work on it from about 2PM til past midnight, and then again Monday morning to restore power. For heat they brought over a gas generator. I asked the electrician how old he thought the wiring coming into the house is, and he starts 'well when electricity was first invented...' and I knew it was going to be bad. Apparently most of the wiring is about 100 years old. Good times.
Now for some pics:
Note how the metal handle on the thing isn't melted or even glowing. This picture doesn't really do it justice, I was on the floor about 10' away and zooming in. That glowing part is actual metal
This is the aftermath after the power was pulled and it cooled off for a couple hours.
In this one you can see where they tore out some of the ceiling to stop it from burning. If my room mate hadn't woken up when he did and smelled smoke our house would be a smoldering pile of ash right now.
Here's a picture of a ghost.
Fast forward to 9:30AM Sunday morning, in the middle of a blizzard. I get woken up by my room mate in the cellar yelling FUUUCK at the top of his lungs. I rush down to the cellar and there is smoke EVERYWHERE. It's also pretty hot. We're looking around trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and we look in the corner towards the fuse boxes, and notice something glowing red, and dripping what looks like orange syrup. We get closer and the heat is unbearable. To my abject horror I realize that the orange glow is the main fuse at the top. The 'syrup' is the steel melting and dripping onto the floor. I shit you not. Oddly it was only part of the fuse that was melting, the rest would end up rather intact for some reason.
So at this point I notice the rafters and beams over the fuse box are charring, so I call the FD and they get out here within a couple minutes and try and take care of things. They take care of the beams, but they can't pull the fuse, since it has electricity going through it or something. They have one of those heat sensing cameras and sure enough it's hot enough to melt steel. They were all saying that they had never seen anything like this before. They call the electric company who come out and basically say they have to shut off power to our house, obviously. So they do that. Only problem is, our furnace needs electricity to spark. So no heat, no hot water, no electricity, in the middle of a blizzard. About this time I hear yelling upstairs and go up to my floor, where my room mate has blown out 3 discs in his back and needs to go to the ER. Crazy day.
Then the electrical inspector comes over and says that there's code violations all over with our electricity and he may have to condemn the house. I'm on the phone with the land lord the whole time, and he has his electrician & his assistant come over, and they work on it from about 2PM til past midnight, and then again Monday morning to restore power. For heat they brought over a gas generator. I asked the electrician how old he thought the wiring coming into the house is, and he starts 'well when electricity was first invented...' and I knew it was going to be bad. Apparently most of the wiring is about 100 years old. Good times.
Now for some pics:
Note how the metal handle on the thing isn't melted or even glowing. This picture doesn't really do it justice, I was on the floor about 10' away and zooming in. That glowing part is actual metal
This is the aftermath after the power was pulled and it cooled off for a couple hours.
In this one you can see where they tore out some of the ceiling to stop it from burning. If my room mate hadn't woken up when he did and smelled smoke our house would be a smoldering pile of ash right now.
Here's a picture of a ghost.
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