GOOD LUCK OR BAD LUCK? YOU BE THE JUDGE

Blog number 437 ******** 01 November, 2010

I have a nephew that lives in a "choice of a thousand" type small town in North Central Iowa. He read my Blog entry (#435 ) about false confessions and sent me the following.

"When I blew up the house, the fire marshal came and interviewed me. I told him that I had turned on the valve for the boiler and had trouble lighting it. I fiddled with it awhile and finally got it lit. I smelled a little gas all this time but thought it was because I had the pilot light held down for too long. I lit the pilot light, stood up and KaBoom!!!

After I told the fire marshall what happened, he looked at me then looked at the insurance guy then back to me then thought awhile and repeated the process. I was starting to get real nervous like someone was going to pull something on me. He looked back at me and said," no that didn't happen," and took the insurance guy into the house.

I was trying to think up a new story to tell him while he was in the house. My memory is not great - never has been, so the truth really would be easier. But the truth obviously wasn't working.

As I was sweating it out, he motioned to me from inside the doorway. I still hadn't thought up an alternate story, which turned out to be fortunate.

The fire marshall showed me that a different valve had failed on a pipe that went through a wall of the basement. The pipe was open on the other side of the wall, spewing gas out into the air. When the gas filled the wall cavity and my wife's closet above it, the gas started to fill the basement room that I was in, which was 8 x 8 and block walls. When I stood up I still had the match in my hand and the flame must have lit the gas at ceiling level. The force of the explosion was outside of the room I was in. It blew out a window, paneling off the walls, walls off the outside foundation, the garage wall out and the washroom at the back of the house. The house did a little jump in the air and settled back a little off the foundation. Then a fire started.

The marshall said I was one lucky boy cause they almost always are doing corpse recovery on deals of this nature.