Glad you're OK.
My closest brush with a firery death was back in my post H.S. travel around Europe year. It was winter in England and very cold. The 1830's rooming house I was staying in that month had no indoor heating, but had a tiny coal burning fireplace in my bedroom - problem was, it had been blocked by the landlord. So, seeing my breath in my bedroom, I decided to walk to the local store and buy a sack of coal. Not BBQ charcoal...real coal - uneven rough hewn pieces of mined coal. I dragged it back to my room, unblocked the fireplace, and, never having lit a coal fire before...decided to fill the fireplace to capacity with coal - almost the whole sack.
So I put some newspaper under some pieces, and lit it, but, unlike a wood fire (which I had lit back in Canada) in this case the coal didn't burn. I tried again, but it didn't take. So I doused the coal in lighter fliud and then threw a match in. The lighter fluid burned, but when it went out, no coal fire. I tried this a couple of times. Finally, resigned to my freezing night, I climbed into bed shivering with a wool hat on my head and socks on my feet, and went to sleep. I dreamt I was in hell, roasting away. I woke up at 3am with a start, and I thought I was in hell - the whole wall seemd to be a red glow illuminating the blackness. Then I realized I was soaked in sweat. Reaching for the bedside lamp, I saw that all the coal was burning - a deep red hell-like steady glow - and letting off heat unlike any wood fire I had ever made back home. I swear it was 45 C in that room. I opened the window to let more cold air in. Outside it was -5, inside it was 45. I slept with the window open for the rest of the night and it was still about 32C in that room. The coal burned until 11am the next morning.
I told this to the roofing guy from Liverpool who lived upstairs and he was telling me the lack of wisdom in burning that much coal at once - use a piece or two...not the whole sack at once...you could have started a fire in your room...if the chimney (that hadn't been used or cleaned in decades) had been clogged you would have suffocated, etc. I learned that while coal doesn't light right away like wood...it eventaully heats up and starts to burn after one has perhaps given up that it will. "In future, take a hot water bottle to bed like the rest of us do" he advised. I bought a hot water bottle, survived and learned.
Again, good to hear you survived too.
Damn I got off lucky.
