They considered if their current alarms were sufficient but determined they had to be at least 20 years old and likely outdated technology, so they welcomed the volunteers. Just eight days before, on May 14th, 2022 Clarence and his wife had been at home when a knock at the door revealed several volunteers offering to install some new smoke alarms in the house at no cost. The four pets of the family including two dogs, a cat and a lizard also all got out with the help of of the firefighters. He quickly got himself and his wife, daughter and granddaughter out of the home safely. “All I saw was flames that I thought I may have been able to put out but the things that were on fire became toxic smoke immediately,” Clarence remembered. At first, he used a fire extinguisher to attempt to put out the fire growing in the basement but soon realized it was getting too big too quickly for the small hand-held extinguisher alone to smother. Clarence says it was the smoke that he remembers most thick, dark that he couldn’t see through and toxic, especially after he got a few whiffs of it.Ĭlarence had heard a small explosion in the basement followed by the high-pitched tone of two smoke alarms going off. On the afternoon of May 22, 2022, Clarence Weber and his family stood outside the Rochelle, Illinois home he has lived in for 41 years and watched as local firefighters arrived and starting putting out a fire raging from the basement.
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