Come On Baby, Light My Fire

Last week I attended a local conference at a hotel. The meeting was held in the morning so there was a breakfast buffet set up. After feasting on a multitude of goodies from the buffet, the hotel servers started tearing the buffet down. One of the servers started to remove a chafing dish from the table with the intent of placing it on a rolling cart to take away. Somewhere in the middle of picking the chafing dish up off the table and placing it on the cart, the sterno can fell onto the carpeted floor. Now may be a good time to tell you that the sterno can was still LIT! The server panicked when she saw that the carpet was on fire and kicked the can. This resulted in the can rolling across the carpet and landing directly underneath the table linen. While the can was rolling, it was spilling its contents onto the carpet so there was a trail of fire which started at the initial point of contact on the floor and ended at the table linen which began to smolder. After about 30 seconds of watching in disbelief, I ran across the room (in very cute, but very high heels I might add) grabbed the pitcher of water from the table next to the buffet line and threw it on the fire. Others joined in and we were able to douse the fire (along with the poor server who seemed unable to move away from the flames) using the pitchers of water from nearby tables. What a way to start a day.