Posted on 06/20/2008 10:14:33 AM PDT by aomagrat
LITTLE MOUNTAIN, SC (WIS) - A Little Mountain family escaped a house fire. The cause of the fire was an unlikely one, it's one you might find in your back yard.
While hard to believe, it's true -- fire ants ended up starting the blaze.
Homeowner James Southerland explained that "the fire ants had gotten into the pressure switch on the water pump and shorted it out."
Southerland owns what's left of the home. His daughter, Erika, her husband and their daughter, Sonya, live there.
James does electrical work and has seen fire ants getting into electrical boxes and A/C units before, but never this bad.
He says, "I woke up, and it wasn't because I smelled smoke, or because the fire detectors were going off."
Erika was inside the home at the time with her husband. 15-month-old daughter Sonya was asleep in another room.
"I was just frantic and screaming for my husband, and we tried throwing a few cups of water."
The flames were too intense. Fortunately, they all made it out ok.
The home was destroyed, as was most everything inside.
Erika is eight months pregnant, and the timing couldn't have been any worse.
"We thought we were good to go as far as baby stuff, we just had a 15-month-old baby," she said.
"We've already had people in our community and our friends, family to help us a lot, and we're going to need it because this was everything we had."
No injuries were reported.
Hey, a squirrel almost burned my house down last December. If I hadn’t been home, it would have. Squirrel chewed through the 210 cord in the wall behind my dryer, causing high amps to go through half the wires instead of all the wires as intended. I noticed smoke behind the dryer, yanked it out and luckily being the paranoid insurance agent I am, had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. If I had thrown water on it, I would have probably died, which was my first instinct. But I emptied the extinguisher, ran and shut off the main electrical box and then dumped two gallons of water on the outlet.
Firemen gave my kids a little award because they did exactly as they were supposed to, all went to the van in the yard and waited and did not move until firemen got them out. They were so proud of themselves, but I was proud of them too.
Fire Ants in Wisconsin? I expected to see Texas or Louisiana but Wisconson? Didn’t know they’d made it that far north, or that they could survive the winters up there.
Bush’s fault...
(Fire ants migrate north due to global warming which was not stopped due to failure of President to address problem. Therefore, Bush’s fault.)
A wasp nest in my outside breaker box caused it to short and catch fire. Thank God for brick. :)
Ok, I just reread the article......call me stupid....or blind.
That's what I thought at first, too. Looked a little closer and the station call letters are WIS located in Columbia, South Carolina.
Nope. Little Mountain, South Carolina is a wide spot in the road a bit northwest of Columbia.
}:-)4
Fire ants= SatanicMini-Me........
Those crazy ants in Texas eat fire ants for snacks. Your house will still burn down but at least you won't get stung on the way out.
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