"It Blew Out"

Chuck went to work at 11:00 this morning and I got home from work around 3:00. I went for a walk, brought the trashcans in from the curb and then I went downstairs to tell Beth what I was fixing for dinner.

She very calmly points to the wall and says, "My thing blew out." I turned around to see this...

 

What?!? "Oh my gosh Beth, what happened?!?"

Silence. She came over to the wall and just stood there. I'm sort of beginning to panic as she just stares at it. "Beth did you see a little fire or something??

"I dunno." "Well, when did you first see this? When did you notice it looked like this?" 

Silence. In moments like this she doesn't have the skills to think of the step by step process of what happened and explain it. We've learned over the years that she will agree to whatever explanation you give so we try to be patient until she does answer.

But I was well on my way to panic mode and I anxiously asked, "Did you see that your alarm clock wasn't working and so you came over to check and that's when you saw this?" 

With a tone of, 'I like that answer!' she said, "Yeah!"

So honestly, I don't know if we'll ever know what actually happened. What I DO know is that a power strip was plugged into the socket. And it's fried as well.

 

I've checked the wall around the plug and it's cold. The other electric sockets are cool to the touch and seem fine. I've told her not to plug anything else into those two sockets until we get it fixed.

Her cpap machine and alarm clock were plugged into the power strip and I plugged them into a few other sockets before they finally worked. I'm a little nervous about leaving them plugged in because I don't know if they've been damaged. Can they be damaged if they were plugged into something that does that??

I feel horrible now because all this time I thought she was using a surge protector but after looking at it today, it's not. It's just a power strip. But I'm so, so grateful she was protected here today!

Every time I pull out of my driveway I pray for protection around our home, the property it's on and the neighborhood we're in. And I believe with all my heart, today the Lord answered that prayer!!