It is a real mess here. We are still in the investigation stage. I can't
move anything touched by the fire. Cause investigator is coming this
morning and perhaps when he leaves I will have permission to clean up. A
ten year old florescent light shorted according to the fire Marshal who
pointed out where the obvious hot spot was.



And it appears the subpanel had a ground fault circuit interrupter that also
failed. As explained to me if the GFCI breaker had worked to shut off the
current then the short in the light would have looked like a power failure
and nothing more. But the breaker kept feeding the current and sparks
became fire became nightmare.etc. But that's all I have pieced together and
I may be wrong. The cause investigator is coming this morning. He knows
about the light that shorted out as identified by the fire marshal. But,
only yesterday did we learn from the electrician about the GFCI breaker, and
the insurance investigator has not heard this news yet. We left the
subpanel un-repaired for him to examine himself. The electrician literally
said a sentence sounding something like this: "The fire would not have
happened if this GFCI had done its job."



"Ray B" wrote in message
news:GtdGj.2055$rb6.953@trnddc01...
Jesus, Al. That's terrible. Any idea what started it?

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies. Books, Artwork, and lots of Free Info!


"Al Pickrel" wrote in message
news:rZbGj.2072$VK4.379@trnddc08...
Yeah, I'm here. We're okay. Cats are okay. No need to organize any
relief drive for us. ;-)

The greenhouse is a bit over-toasted, if you get my drift.

The portion of the collection that made it into the house Friday night
after the fire and before the cold got it is now being housed in one of
Pat Brennan's spare (SPARE?!) greenhouses. It has been quite a
nightmarish ride since Friday night when I discovered my greenhouse in
flames.

I think there may be pictures for abpo once I can get my camera batteries
re-charged and a take few minutes to compose something humorous and
Al-ien-like for your reading pleasure....

Here is one absurdity from yesterday which I have cataloged for other
people and cut and pasted he



Although I still can not laugh at much right now. Except maybe the
ServiceMaster guy the insurance company sent over this morning to
'clean'. We got a chuckle out of him as we were packing Pat's truck for
another trip to Mt Jackson. "ServiceMaster" is the company that cleans
up after fires and floods. The insurance company has still not sent an
adjuster so they have no idea what happened here, but they sent a
ServiceMaster dude with a vacuum and a bottle of Windex. He took one
look at it all, took some pictures with his cell phone, and said we
needed a contractor and he was not touching anything until an adjuster
gave him approval and I said, "Duh."



Credit for the "Windex" line goes to Molly Brennan. I have adapted her
response to fit my needs and stolen her humor, although not word for
word, but credit is due...



Take care.



wrote in message
...
yeah, subject line should have been "al's".

--j_a