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Darwin Awards
2010 Slush Pile

This item was recently submitted by a reader.
Should I include it in the archive?
Vote to tell me what *you* think!

Full Basement, Empty Head

2010 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance

My family and I had just moved into a house that had just finished being a show-home that was at most five years old. We had moved in in September with all our finches (at least 30) and used a part of the basement to house them. The basement is poorly designed to say the least. There are only two electrical outlets out of the whole basement and we only had access to one since the other was busy powering the basement fridge and the sump-pump all new houses come equipped with. Seeing as how there was only one outlet, we went to a hardware store and bought one that screws into the light socket so we would at least two outlets to work with. We had one extension cord stretch across the floor to the bird area and one snake across the top of the cages to power everything.

During early spring, sometime during the night, the sump-pump stopped working and a section of the basement filled with 4CM of water. My mom and I went into the basement in the morning to hear the sound of electricity running through water. The cords on the floor all had sparks due to the water but the cords on top of the cages were fine so the birds weren't in any immediate danger. My mom, not thinking, immediately rushed to the water filled area. Seeing the danger, I yelled at her to stop and rushed to the outlet the extension cord was plugged into. I yanked the plug from the wall and turned to see that my mom had indeed stopped but was still in a shallow area of the water. Luckily she had her slippers with the rubber bottoms on so no electricity reached her and the slippers also rose her feet enough so no water touched her. I scolded her from where I was and made her wait a couple minutes to be sure the water no longer had a charge. I unplugged the extension cord in the light socket so we wouldn't have to worry about the end of it falling into the water and electrocuting us. We checked on the finches and all were fine, if not a little scared.

My dad and sister joined us in the basement to clean up the mess and replace the broken pump with a small one that we had until a repairman could be sent to replace the broken one. To this day, I'm still unsure as to the reason the section of basement I was in was bone dry whereas hers was flooded.

The extension cord, two power bars, and three unpacked boxes were the only casualties of this incident.

Submitted on 10/17/2010

Submitted by: Megan
Reference: February/March 2009 Edmonton, AB

Copyright © 2010 DarwinAwards.com

>> Moderator Scores <<

Bruce said:
Definitely Toss: Lacks Excellence
Thanks for an interesting story, Megan, but I just don't see anything truly Darwin-worthy here. I think a lot of people in similar situations would have done exactly the same thing. And frankly, if the water was electrified as you indicated then I'd blame that on poor/faulty wiring in the house since it should have immediately tripped a fuse or circuit breaker when it happened.


Candi said:
Definitely Toss: Lacks Excellence
What Bruce said.


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