We had a tense moment last month while we were using our fireplace. Now, you’re never supposed to leave a fire unattended, especially the fireplace in your home! This is why some people choose to get either gas fireplaces or electric ones, so they don’t have to deal with the risk of a fire in the home. Of course, everybody enjoys the authentic feeling of a wood burning fireplace, so you must take precautions. In our case, we weren’t using a spark guard in front of the fireplace. On top of that, I was cooking in the kitchen. I asked my son to keep an eye on the fireplace, but he was too busy playing his online game when a spark flew out of the fireplace and caught the carpet on fire. Suddenly, the smoke alarms were blaring and I instinctively grabbed the fire extinguisher. I saw the smoke coming from the area of the fireplace and ran over there and started spraying where I saw flames. Fortunately, I was able to get all the fire out and the whole place didn’t burn down. I got everybody out of the house and opened all the windows to air out the smoke. Fortunately, only the carpet was burned and it didn’t destroy the wood flooring beneath it, so we had that carpet replaced. We got a spark guard for the fireplace so this never happens again. It would have been disappointing had our whole house burned down, but I’m glad that everybody is okay and we have taken steps to prevent this kind of thing from happening down the road.