stuart

Received from a friend who is in the insurance property business. It is well worth reading.[/font]



This is one of those e-mails that if you don't send it, rest assured someone on your list will suffer for not reading it. The original message was written by a lady whose brother and wife learned a hard lesson this past week.
Their house burnt down.. nothing left but ashes. They have good insurance so the house will be replaced and most of the contents. That is the good news.

However, they were sick when they found out the cause of the fire. The insurance investigator sifted through the ashes for several hours. He had the cause of the fire traced to the master bathroom. He asked her sister-in-law what she had plugged in the bathroom. She listed the normal things....curling iron, blow dryer. He kept saying to her, "No, this would be something that would disintegrate at high temperatures". Then her sister-in-law remembered she had a Glade Plug-In, in the bathroom.

The investigator had one of those "Aha" moments. He said that was the cause of the fire. He said he has seen more house fires started with the plug-in type room fresheners than anything else. He said the plastic they are made from is THIN. He also said that in every case there was nothing left to prove that it even existed. When the investigator looked in the wall plug, the two prongs left from the plug-in were s till in there. [/font]

Her sister-in-law had one of the plug-ins that had a small night light built in it. She said she had noticed that the light would dim and then finally go out. She would walk in to the bathroom a few hours later, and the light would be back on again. The investigator said that the unit was getting too hot, and would dim and go out rather than just blow the light bulb. Once it cooled down it would come back on. That is a warning sign . [/font]

The investigator said he personally wouldn't have any type of plug in fragrance device anywhere in his house. He has seen too many places that have been burned down due to them.

Jack Brannon

I am so glad you posted this message and I read it. My wife HAD two of these creatures in our house, but they are in the past now. They are in the trash can and in the shape they are in, nobody will ever get to use them again. I have already lost everything I had in one fire and sure don't want to go through that again. I got everything moved into this farm house on a Saturday night and it burned to the ground on Sunday morning. I didn't even have renters insurance yet so I did lose everything I had.

smitty1967

I have to offer my qualified opinion on this topic. First, let me say that I'm a fireman with almost 20 years on a major metropolitan fire department. Also, I'm a skeptic; I don't believe most things that come across my in-box out-of-hand. I research them. This is one of the things I've researched, since it rang in my chosen career field and also since it sounded a little hoaky, for a couple reasons.

First: Almost anyone in the fire service would tell you that no insurance investigator would be sifting through the ashes until long after the fire department investigator was through.

Second: The recounting of the investigator's questions leading up to the wife's recalling the air freshener and the investigator's epiphany. Totally bogus sounding.

Third: No fire investigator would ever hang their hat on something that they claimed "that in every case there was nothing left to prove that it even existed." Think of this scientifically: if there's nothing left to prove it's existance, how could it be listed as the cause of a fire?

I know all these things sound a little nit-picky, but look at it this way: in our hobby, precision is everything. A difference of 1/64" is a chasm to a furniture builder when you're speaking about tight joints. To most people, 1/64" doesn't mean squat. That's what makes us hobbyists the perfectionists we are. Well, in the fire service, when determining cause and origin of a fire, precision is everything, too. To be sloppy and careless, and cast off the cause of a fire to an 'a-ha' moment is nothing any professional in my profession would do.

To read more on this particular topic, and learn its true origins, please visit the snopes website, and read the article at:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/glade.asp

Food for thought for all you rational thinkers and perfectionists out there.

regards,
smitty

Jack Brannon

I don't care if it is nit-picking. After losing everything I had in one fire, if there is any remote chance of it happening again, I want to delete that chance immediately. Thanks again, Stuart. I would rather smell bathroom odors than the odor of all my possessions going up in smoke again.

stuart

ummmm i simply got this E-mail from a buddy who got it from another buddy.

sure nuff if the air plug ins were a possible, even a flicker of a flame, cause it would surely be on recall.

All I know is most fires are cause from sparks or overheat by wires, outlets lighted or appliance units having a defect.

But I trust the fireman knows way more than I do.