House fire

[hayden123113]

I've come home from school today to find fire trucks out side my house and my room destroiedand my three snakes dead one of which I've had since I was 10. After some questions with a fire fighter it was concluded that the fire was started by a faulty heat matt. Just a warning to all other reptile keepers to replace your heat matt regularly and make use of fire alarms even though no one was home to hear mine. The faulty matt was 5 years old and I should have replaced ages ago.

 

[andynic07]

Sorry to hear mate.

 

[Becca-Marie]

So sorry for your loss. Just wondering, were you using thermostats?

Sent from my LG-P690f using Tapatalk 2

 

[oOLaurenOo]

Very sad to hear. Sorry for your loss.

 

[hayden123113]

Yes I was using thermostats I have no idea how it managed to catch light, the probably racist the prob was on the other side of the enclosure, and it was quite a large enclosure

 

[Rogue5861]

How can they pin point it down to the heatmat? Wouldnt it of been destroyed in the fire?

So sorry for you lose mate, i hope everything else will be covered by insurance.


Rick

 

[hayden123113]

Thanks rick, I don't know how they know where the point of orgin of the fire is they told me the fire started in this part of the enclosure so I assumed it was the heat mat. I didn't argue it's there job to know about this kind of stuff

 

[Grogshla]

aw man sorry to hear man.

 

[lizardwhisperer]

Rotten luck mate. And poor snakes.

Your parents will be placing a home and contents claim to their insurancew company, ask them what the firebrigade/police incident report says about the cause of the fire, may be something else left on in your room (ie electric blanket, heater or computer that caused the fire due to an electrical fault).

I had a 7W heatpad fail last year, the power cables into the business end shorted (as a result of my moving the heatpad regularly to clean the enclosure. Went off with a pop and wiff of smoke and the thermostat attached to it died.
The connection into the pad is weak spot prone to failure , and if warer gets into the pad will fail too.

I was lucky, I was right there and immediately unplugged the offending mat and thermostat and no damage done.

Was the mat insulated from everything combustable ? ( by a layer of ceramic tiles ? )

 

[damian83]

Sorry to hear. Just glad it wasnt the whole house

 

[Marzzy]

Ill be tiling all my matts now.

Sorry for your loss hopefully everyone learns from this.