While responding to a question about wood stove explosions, the post reminded me of a very dangerous thing that happened at my house while I was at work one winter day.

We heated solely with the wood stove. I kept a squeeze bottle of kerosene handy to help get the kindling started up after cleaning out the stove.

One day I got a call from my wife who was blaming me for her incident. She had let the fire go out and was starting it back up. She had laid a bunch of kindling in the stove with some larger sticks on top. She douced the wood with kerosene from the bottle and closed the top-loading griddle and went for a match (yea, you see it coming). She lit a piece of paper and lifted the lid to drop it in on the wood to ignite the kerosene. When she dropped the burnign paper in, BOOM! There was a blast that rattled the windows and knocked her back engulfed in a fireball. She lost her eyebrows and had minor burns on her face. So what happened?

When my wife put kerosene on the wood some ran down into the coal bed. Some hot coals heated the kerosene and turned it into a vapor. Once the lid was closed the vapor built up in the firebox awaiting some oxygen and a source of ignition. When she lifted the lid, there was plenty of oxygen, drop in the burning paper and you have instantaneous ignition of several cubic feet of vaporized kerosene causing a lovely but dangerous fiery explosion directly in the face of a cold woman who did not want to build a fire in the first place.

I am stopping the story there. I really should not mention our phone conversation on this family-friendly site.

Be careful and don't use kerosene on hot coals. If you do, make sure you have a falame BEFORE you add kerosene or fire starter.