On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 07:33:57 -0600, bud--
wrote:

On 6/26/2013 5:28 AM, John Grabowski wrote:

My neighbor just suffered a serious fire. His house had an enclosed
porch at the rear, with an open, roofed desk connected to the porch
rear. He had several GFI breakers out there, including one on the
rear porch wall. Around one AM, when he and family were asleep,
a fire started at that GFI switch (according to Fire Marshall), and
got going pretty good before their dog started barking. That saved
their lives for sure. Almost killed their dog and cat, though. The
fire badly burned the rear half of the house and sent black soot
throughout the rest of the house. The house is pretty well totaled.

That's what happened. I have to wonder how a GFI could do that!
I heard the Fire Marshall actually say that what happened was the GFI
wires arced, but that was not a 'short' to the GFI. Hence it didn't
trip. So, the GFI presented no protection did it! The arcing just
continued until it started the fire!

All this makes me think that my GFIs are not providing me the
protection I always thought they did. I'm not sleeping as well these
days.

Anyone have an opinion about this?


*I surmise that the GFI receptacle had loose connections and that there
was a considerable load on the wiring. That would cause the arcing which
would ignite any combustible materials in direct contact or in very
close proximity.

And if that is what happened the GFCI wasn't any more responsible for
the fire than if the same thing happened with an ordinary receptacle.

I wonder how much of the GFCI was left for the fire marshal to determine
what happened.

It was there. I saw it - together with his written report hanging
from it. I saw it too.

me



As RBM pointed out the GFI is not designed for this type of protection,
but an arc fault circuit breaker is.

Does this house have smoke detectors?