Fire Cabinet By Isaac

Fire in the hole! (Or some other similarly stupid title)

After brushing my teeth at the public restroom at the Capitol Reef Campground, Dad and I headed back to the van while Aaron brushed his teeth. We got back to the campsite, and of course, we smelled something weird. Dad thought it might be a campfire, and after glancing into the van, I thought it might be from the small flickering light that I could see reflected off our plates in the cabinet. The sink pump appeared to be working pretty hard, even though the counter-top was closed. "Dad," I said as dad moved across the van to open the counter-top. "Dad," I said as he opened the counter-top. "Dad," I said as he stared at the running faucet. "Dad," I said as he tried to turn the faucet off with the floor switch. "Dad, it's on fire."

I'd been staring at the flickering light reflected in the plates as I carried out this interesting and moving dialogue. At first, I thought that the burner must be on and that it was reflected in the plates, but the plates were in the cabinet and the burner was on top of the counter. Unless photons had x-ray capabilities, that couldn't be it. So next, I thought that there must be a light on in there. But why would there be a light in a cabinet, and why would it be flickering? I was finally forced to admit that the cabinet was indeed on fire. As Sherlock Holmes once said, "Once you have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Thus, I produced the informed remark that was outlined in the last paragraph.

So, I attempted to carry out logical reasoning in the course of a tenth of a second. My brain immediately thought to use all available resources to carry out my priorities as best as possible. First priority happened to be picking up the chihuahua. I leaned into the van to snatch Pika, while dad threw a pair of flaming kitchen mitts past my legs. I extricated Pika from the van as dad grabbed the fire extinguisher and blew a large cloud of pressurized dust into the flaming cabinet. Before he did this, I caught a glimpse of the inside of the cabinet; a small electrical fire was calmly eating the wires controlling the automated water pump. Then it was gone in a spray of dust. I turned around; on the pavement, the kitchen mitts were on fire. Dad extinguished this fire as well. As a precaution, Aaron emptied a water bottle on top of them. And then started to freak out at dad for playing with fire.

We ran out of water as dad tried to get the pump to stop running.

It turns out the the problem arose not because the pump had heated up from over exertion, but because the floor switch had been designed to be on for short periods of time. Being on for ten or fifteen minutes was too much for it, and it obligingly lit on fire to show its disapproval.

Let's see now; broken fuel pump, broken engine, wheel fell off, and innumerable other problems have plagued Sylvia. Luckily, this was the first, and hopefully last, fire we've had in Sylvia. Nothing worse could happen. Right? Right??