FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

It was near catastrophe at Mom's house today. 

Mikayla, Sharae, and I as well as our people, got together for swim dinner this afternoon. We were going to have hamburger and hotdogs for dinner and planned to grill them. Mikayla opened the propane tank and lit the grill then heard an unusual hissing sound. She pulled the grill away from the house to investigate and discovered that the gas line wasn't completely connected to the propane tank. As she moved to turn the grill off before fixing it, the line came completely off the tank and the propane coming out of the tank caught fire.

The fire flashed in Mikayla's face and caught the whole grill on fire. She yelled to me to get the fire extinguisher, and I dashed out to see what was happening. I yelled at her to get the grill away from the house, then threw open cupboards looking for the extinguisher. I couldn't find one. In a panic, I called Mom in California and without preamble, asked her where the extinguisher was. She said she didn't know so I hung up and dashed around some more. I had the thought to run next door and get one from Steven Cox and with one last "GET THE GRILL AWAY FROM THE HOUSE!" I dashed next door. I pounded on Steve's door and asked for an extinguisher as quickly as possible. He ran to the deck where he thought one was, but it wasn't there. He ran to the laundry room and grabbed another, and then I raced back to my mom's house.

While I was dashing over to Steve's, Mikayla had seen the extinguisher on Steve's deck and had Blake go grab it. While I was racing around the front of the house, Blake raced around the back and sprayed the grill as I burst from the inside of the house and sprayed the grill again. Overkill, yes, but I was seriously concerned the grill was going to explode and start the house on fire. 

As soon as the fire was out, I called Mom back to reassure her the house was not on fire. All was well. Then we promptly ordered four new fire extinguishers: two for Mom and two for Steve. It was far more excitement than we wanted in the evening, and we had to cook our burgers and dogs in the oven. Mikayla had singed eyebrows and had burned away part of the hair around her face, but fortunately was otherwise uninjured. It could have been so, so, so much worse and we are grateful nothing worse happened.