I lit a candle and drew a bath for Danelle the day before. Its something I do for her when she seems stressed and it helps her. This was around 8pm on the 21st. I thought nothing of it.
The next day, Danelle and I went for a quite morning walk before we had to go pick up the kids. Later that afternoon, around 4 pm, I was in the basement on the computer. The smoke detectors in the house went off. They are all attached, so when one goes, the whole house goes. I knew there was no fire in the basement and figured they burned something in the kitchen.
About that time Danelle called down to me as I was coming up. We sent the kids outside, mostly to have them avoid the loud alarms going off. We went up to the second floor to see what happened. At the top of the stairs, Danelle smelled something. We went back into our room and the smell got stronger. There in our bathroom, the window sill was on fire from the candle burning down from the previous night.
We were lucky to be home and not have the house burn for any significant portion. It did take two full cups of water from the bath tub to put out the flames which were over a foot high when we got in there. Fortunately the fire had not completely caught!
Be careful with your candles!!!
Hogan Haake