The Fire

One evening, we all started smelling an odor that we identified as burning plastic. I walked from room to room sniffing like a dog, but could not figure out where it was coming from. This went on for an hour or so. I sniffed around, John sniffed around, Elizabeth sniffed around. It seemed to be moving from room to room. There are so many air currents from poorly sealed doors and windows in our apartment that the smell was literally being blown around.

Another hour and I did another thorough search, once, twice, three times around and found nothing. I still couldn’t isolate where it was coming from but we thought it was the kitchen. I finally gave up and supposed that it must be something from a neighbor and that I was over reacting. I take these things so seriously that people often make fun of me. I got ready for bed and lay down and figured it would sort itself out. I was so tired because it was midnight by that point. I laid there and thought to myself, what if there really is a problem and I go to sleep and we all burn up? We had no smoke detectors in the apartment. If it did start to burn, I would have no warning. I got back up and searched again, once, twice, and that’s when the smoke started. Smoke was pluming out from the wall from a wall socket in the kitchen.

I called the fire department and, in a panic, tried to explain the problem to them in French. I imagine it was like a Pink Panther movie. I kept saying “fume” and “fumer” which I know means “to smoke” but they didn’t know what I was talking about. I later looked on Google translate and figure that I probably should have said “fumée” (“foo-may” which is the noun for smoke and it sounds exactly the same as “fumer” which is the verb to smoke). I probably wasn’t pronouncing the “u” just right and it may have thrown them off or maybe they just weren’t interested in my concern. I said “feu” (fire) and they got that. After five minutes of this, they finally agreed to come. The guy actually said (in French), “Okay, we’ll come,” as if he were mildly annoyed to have to stop his card game or something. Another few minutes went by as tried to give them the address and entry codes and directions to our actual apartment from the sidewalk. They finally told me to wait outside. Luckily, they told me to cut the power to the apartment first, which I did. In total darkness, I fished around for flashlights, woke Elizabeth up and told her to get dressed and ready to go if need be, grabbed my one prized possession, my laptop, and went outside to wait.

Eventually, a huge fire truck showed up full of fire fighters. They drove right by the apartment, got to the end of the street, paused, and turned around. I had to flag them down. Three of them came out in their suits and followed me upstairs. The smoke had stopped, but I showed them where the smoke had been coming from. They said that the outlet had gotten so hot that it finally started smoldering. The plug was fused to the outlet. It wasn’t smoking anymore because I had cut all of the power. They figured out that the plug went to the washing machine, which I hadn’t used all week. They messed with the fuses and said that the apartment was wired all wrong (being an old apartment) and that we needed to get an electrician in. They shut off all of the power to the kitchen and said to leave it like that until the electrician came. At least we had power in the rest of the apartment.

I moved the toaster and tea kettle into the dining room for breakfast and hoped that we could get an electrician in before all of the food in the fridge spoiled. Ironically, I had filled the fridge with food for a dinner party the following night. There we were, without a kitchen. I told John to email our guests and tell them we’d take them out to dinner instead.

Ironically again, our apartment manager was on vacation that week. He left us the name of someone to call in his absence. The funny thing is that we had had a couple of false alarms with the manager. I was worried that he was beginning to think I was a moron. Most recently, it smelled like gas in the kitchen and I said we might have a gas leak. The gas man came and found nothing. I finally narrowed it down to an open sewer pipe that smelled up the whole kitchen (like an outhouse!). We told him that and he said we could pour two liters of water down it. I don’t know if that is a typical thing in Paris or not. I have certainly never heard of that before. I plugged it up with a dish towel and the smell went away. When I smelled the burning plastic I hesitated to call because I had cried wolf previously. But, without power, I needed to call and sort it out.

I waited until 8:00 in the morning to call the substitute manager. He arranged to have an electrician come that afternoon. The electrician had to pry the plug out of the previously smoking outlet using a tool. Part of the plastic in the outlet broke off with the plug. The surrounding area was black from being burned. The plug is partially melted and had the missing piece of the outlet stuck to it permanently. We were lucky to catch it before it caught the wall on fire. Apparently, it was an old outlet and the prongs from the plug had room to move around inside of it. When one of the prongs no longer touched the metal in the socket, the other prong created a short circuit, which created an electrical arc that raised the level of current so high that it melted the plastic and would have caused a fire if it had stayed powered up. It didn’t matter that the machine connected to the plug was not in use.

The electrician powered back up the fuses to the rest of the kitchen, leaving the circuit to the dishwasher and washing machine unpowered until he could come back and replace the socket. He promised to come on Monday, but you know how it is. A week later, the following Monday, he finally came and replaced the socket. In the meantime, we had to use an extension cord to power up the dishwasher or the washing machine, one at a time.

I now have new sympathy for the folks in the U.S. who don’t speak English well. I can’t tell you how stupid I felt trying to explain everything to the fire fighters and especially when they asked us the owner’s name and address and I had no idea. John had to go search through his computer for an electronic copy of the lease. We had to tell them that we rented this place from an agency and we didn’t know who the owner was. They accepted the agency name and address and filled out the paperwork for the house call as best as possible.