A senior Donegal fireman and his family say they are lucky their house didn’t burn down for Christmas after their dishwasher went on fire.
Now Frank McDermott is warning people not to put your appliances on and leave their homes.
Frank put on the dishwasher after having lunch last week in his home in Rosebank, Moville, with his wife Celemma, and left the family home to return to work.
However, by the time he reached the bottom of his housing estate, to his shock, he received a call from Celemma saying the dishwasher was on fire.
“I went straight back to the house and there was smoke pouring out of the dishwasher,” said Frank.
“I opened it and slightly burned my hand, I wasn’t expecting it to be so hot, but I could see the flames inside. This wasn’t just smoke, the thing was on fire and it took off within a matter of minutes.”
Moville Fire Station Officer Frank explained that he was able to put out the fire using water in his house after his wife had turned off the electricity in the house.
“Thank God Celemma was in the house, it was quick thinking on her behalf to turn off the power, as the electricity was generating the heat to get the fire going. Things could have been so different, there is no question that if she hadn’t have been in the house it would have been on fire.
“It would have taken a few minutes for the kitchen units to go up then the house would have been next.”
Father-of-three Frank is now urging people not to leave their homes after putting on appliances such as dishwashers, washing machines and importantly tumble dryers.
“Look we’ve probably did this 100 times before, put on the dishwasher and left the house, but we are urging people not to do that. In the run-up to Christmas we are all using our appliances more and more. We’ve more dishes and we’re using the tumble dryers more because we can’t get the clothes dried outside.
“Tumble dryers are probably a higher risk of going on fire given the heat they generate and the clothes fibres inside them. Our dishwasher was older but I’m sure there are a lot of people out there with similar dishwashers.
“We are urging people not to leave these appliances when they leave the house, and if it all possible don’t put them on at night and go to bed – there is a huge risk if you are in bed. I know we all have fire alarms nowadays but if an appliance goes on fire when you are in bed it will take time to get everyone organised and out of the house,” he added.
Experienced fire-fighter Frank says appliance fires are very rare, however he has seen first hand how they can happen when you least expect it.
“We are very lucky, it could have been a very different story for us so hopefully we’ll be able to get the message out there for other people,” Frank added.
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