A Fire in the Hearth

Life has been chaotic here as usual. I have been much more focused on the impending holidays the last week or so than my real estate business, but soon it will all be over and I will be back to business as usual. In the meantime, however, I want to pass on a little story and some advice about protecting your investment.

A couple of weeks ago Jason, Gray and I were in the living room watching some TV before bed, when Ben came running out of his room and down the hall to us.

“There’s a fire in my room!” he shouted, and we responded immediately. Jason jumped up and ran back there. I grabbed Gray and followed. There was a fire, but don’t worry, it was really minor and Jason put it out in seconds. It turned out that Ben had tossed his ‘Blue Blankie’ (his security blanket) up in the air and it had landed on top of the halogen lamp. when he pulled it down a piece of it had caught fire. In the end, the only damage was to Blue Blankie.

Last week I got an email that another agent in my company’s house burned to the ground and was a total loss. A couple of days later while I was at an appointment, my potential client told me a story of a house around the block that had burned down the day before. There were two more less than a mile from my house that went down just before this weekend. Each of these stories made me a little sicker to my stomach. We had been SO lucky. It could have been so much worse in so many ways.

For the most part, the fires lately have been attributed to a couple of things:

1. Misuse of fireplaces – In AZ we just don’t get to use them very often, so when we do, many haven’t been properly cleaned, or people just don’t know the correct safety procedures.

2. Electrical lights in close proximity to dryed out trees – Winter is the dryest time of the year here, and most people don’t keep their trees sufficiently watered, and many people leave their tree lights on all night.

Both of these hazards are fairly easily fixed. So keep them in mind over the holidays, and consider giving a fire extinguisher as a gift. We bought our new one at Lowes last week.