Heating mishap causes home disaster

Linda Smith of Kalispell loves her aromatherapy velour wheat hot packs.

Heated in the microwave, they provide warming comfort to her arthritic hands. She never dreamed, however, that an overheated bag could devastate the interior of her home and damage her lungs.

 “I want to let other people know about this,” she said. “I wouldn’t wish anyone to ever go through anything like this — physically and emotionally.”

Her ordeal began on Oct. 13. Smith and some friends had spent the evening together belatedly celebrating her Oct. 4 birthday. They went to the Eagles and then a local bar where Smith played bingo since she doesn’t drink.

“We had so much fun,” she said.

It was about 11:30 p.m. when she arrived at her Northridge home. She was alone since her husband, Dave, wasn’t due back from his job in North Dakota until the next day.

After the long evening, Smith was in pain since she suffers from osteo and rheumatoid arthritis as well as fibromyalgia. She copes with her many joint and muscle aches with a variety of therapies including hot baths and the velour wheat bags that she heats for a minute and 20 seconds in the microwave.

She heated one bag for the prescribed time. 

“I decided I wanted a second one,” she said. “The only thing I can figure out is that I must have pushed 1200, an extra zero.”

Smith started the microwave, then walked down the hallway to her office and sat down at the computer with the door open. In a few minutes, the smoke alarm sounded.

She had just changed the batteries that afternoon in the 23-year-old smoke alarms.  

“I went running down the hall and this heavy black smoke was all over,” she said. “I could hardly see the kitchen.”

Smith said the smell was horrible: “the worst toxic smoke smell” that she had ever encountered.

She couldn’t imagine what had caught on fire when she saw the flames inside the microwave. Smith said she knew enough not to open the door and feed more oxygen to the fire.

“My dad was a fireman and he taught me all these things,” she said.

After shutting down the microwave, she grabbed the cordless phone and dashed out the kitchen door into the garage and then the driveway to call 911. Smith was barefooted and had no coat as she told the dispatcher about her accident. 

“I thought I just needed help getting smoke out of the house so they didn’t come code,” she recalled. “I told them that I didn’t need an ambulance.”

It seemed like an eternity but the fire report showed that the fire department arrived in about six minutes.

“I couldn’t breathe,” Smith said. “I was coughing and coughing and bending over.”

The emergency responders entered and set up fans. They spent more than two hours using fans to get the smoke out of the upstairs and basement of the house.

At that point, neither the firefighters nor Smith realized the potential toxic effect of the smoke. Exhausted, she didn’t question the firefighters’ advice that she could spend the night with the window open in the bedroom that had the door closed during the fire.

“I was really confused from lack of oxygen. I was confused for a couple of weeks after the fire,” she said. “I don’t know why I didn’t ask for medical help. I thought I just needed oxygen from my C-PAP machine.”

She slept in the house with all the windows open. When Smith still had breathing problems the next day, she called her physician, Dr. Sarah Robinson, who told her to go immediately to the emergency room.

“I had wonderful care there,” Smith said. “They did lung X-rays. My husband got home from North Dakota in time to see me have the breathing treatments.”

When she was released with prescriptions for various medications, Smith and her husband returned to the house for her overnight bag, then went to stay at the home of a friend for a week. She moved to a hotel for a month and then rented a house a block from her home as the repair list for her home grew.

Smith had an appointment at Rocky Mountain Heart and Lung in the week after the fire where she was diagnosed with respiratory hypersensitivity from the toxic gas. Her physician dictated no cleaning with chemicals and removal of any items retaining smoke or chemical fumes.

She soon learned why after her furniture was cleaned and returned.

“I grabbed one of the pillows and smelled it,” she said. “I started gasping for air and coughing and wheezing.”

In the end, her contractor First Call Restoration ended up removing all the carpeting, cabinetry and more for a nearly total remodel. Smith said she had learned to advocate for herself with her insurance company when representatives balked at replacing smoke-damaged cabinets.

“I have learned four words,” she said: “That is not acceptable.”

Smith teared up as she talked about the 34 large garbage bags of her possessions, including 40-year collections of Tupperware, Pampered Chef and Rubbermaid products that went to the dump and were immediately plowed under to make certain no one touched them.

“Some of it was wedding gifts,” she said.

Yet she remains grateful that she has the rental house near home and that her house didn’t burn down. She feels blessed that she didn’t go to her bedroom and fall asleep while heating her second hot pack. 

Since the fire, she purchased another velour wheat bag.

“This is what caused everything,” Smith said. “It caught fire and melted down into hard plastic, emitting all those fumes into the upstairs and the basement of my house.”

Research at the National Institutes of Health revealed another hazard of severe burns from heating wheat bags inappropriately. Experiments showed bags reaching temperatures as high as 165 degrees cause skin-destroying burns in two seconds.

According to one study, the bags had heating instructions for only certain power microwaves and that most people don’t know how to convert them for higher-powered ovens. The instructions failed to address reheating bags that had not completely cooled.

Manufacturers suggest either lightly misting the bag or heating it with a cup of water to keep it from drying out during heating. 

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.