scary, very scary

over this past weekend, i had a scary but very fortunate experience. i was up early Saturday morning, around 5:45am ( i am a breakfast waitress too) and went into our garage looking for something and was meet by a garage full of smoke.
the garage is used mostly for storage and my dye studio, not for storing our cars. in my dying of fabric i use portable hot plate burners, which one had shorted out, heated it self up and started to burn the hat set on top of it. luckily, wool is naturally self-extinguishing and had been used for fireman's blankets, so the fiber had just smoldered. which is very lucky as we have many chemicals stored in the garage and our closes smoke detector is not working, so the situation could have turned for the worst.
so just a quick reminder of those of us that work with heat, flame, chemical, etc. to be cautious with our equipment. i would have never had thought of my burners shorting out and almost burning down our house, but you can bet they'll never be left plugged in when not in use from now on.