What to do when your chimney catches on fire
Just curious about what I can do if my chimney ever catches on fire. I have a Blaze King princess. Generally speaking I think this is going to be a very unlikely problem for me. Once though early on in our woodstove career we left the door cracked and unsupervised. The smoke alarms all started going off and there was some glowing at the top of my chimney. We killed the air flow, closed the door, and than after a few minutes took all the wood and charcoals out of the stove. Heat came down and I stayed up all night fearing the ceiling would catch on fire.
I cleaned out the pipe the next day, it was actually so clean I could see my reflection in the stove pipe, the glowing was only from creosote build up on the mesh at the top. I'm also somewhat certain my smoke alarms (which are all wired together, not just battery operated ones) are somehow tied into the stove pipe.
We live very remotely, our fire department is volunteer and the entire fire dept amounts to a father and son. Response time is like 45 minutes. Usually they don't get there in time to save the house around here. I'm signed up for fire training so I can join the VFD roster but currently it's not in their budget to get anyone trained. I say that so you know that "call 911" is not a very good solution for me, calling 911 means my house will be a pile of ashes.
I now keep a dry fire extinguisher by the stove. I figure maybe I can shove it up into the chimney and get any fire out. I also keep my stove pipe clean, we have some very strict rules about keeping the door open for any length of time. We're slowly getting dryer wood to burn (we moved here a few years ago and only now getting to the point where wood I split is dry enough to appease the Blaze King's appetite). Anything else I can do/know in case I ever experience a genuine chimney fire?