Bonfire of the vanities?
A British couple is warning the public to keep reflective surfaces out of direct sunlight after a small make-up mirror placed near a window sparked a fire inside their home.
“It’s not something you think of,” Sam Wilkinson, 48, told South West News Service of the freak inferno, which occurred Jul. 18th at their home in Rochester, Kent.
The registered nurse and her partner, Michael, were at their residence when they noticed an alarming smell.
“I was working in the office, which is directly under the room which caught fire, and I could smell burning, sort of like burnt toast,” Michael recalled. “I checked my fan to see if it was overheating, went downstairs to see if anyone was cooking, and then I heard the smoke alarm on the top floor go off.”
Panicking, Michael ran upstairs to wake up Sam, whereupon the couple ran out of the house and dialed emergency services.
Two firetrucks arrived and subsequently doused the third-floor inferno while the blaze brigade also managed to rescue the family cat, Tigger.
Fortunately, while many items in the bedroom were destroyed — including a melted TV and blackened walls — the flames were largely contained by a closed door.
This prevented it from spreading to other parts of the domicile.
That’s when firefighters revealed the alarming cause of the inferno: Sunlight that had bounced off the small make-up mirror and ignited the couple’s curtains.
“We’d only just redecorated the room a few days before, so we weren’t sure what caused it,” said Sam. “When the firefighters told us it was the mirror, we thought how can a mirror do that?”
She added, “Now we know anything reflective or shiny near a window where the sun hits it, could start a fire.”
The couple is sharing their ordeal “to help keep others safe and remind everyone to move reflective objects away from windowsills and out of direct sunlight,” said Sam.
“Our advice now [is to] just be careful and educate people in your household about the dangers,” seconded her other half. “It’s one small preventable thing, that can have devastating effects.”
