No cupcakes

Thursday night I was making a batch of chocolate cherry coke cupcakes for my coworkers at Kyoto. I turned on the oven to preheat and went back to mixing the batter. About a minute later I heard this weird buzzing noise like a bug caught in a spiderweb. I turn around and there is a bright light in my oven. My first thought was "hmmm that's odd. The light doesn't work in the oven." Then I opened the door and saw that my oven was on fire! The element on the bottom had fire and sparks on the left hand side that was traveling toward the back of the oven. It looked like the spark leading toward a stick of dynamite. I quickly turned off the oven, but the fire/spark continued to travel so I grabbed my phone. Trying to decide if I should call Mom (I was kind of not thinking clearly) or 911 I chose 911. I told them my oven was on fire and as I was giving my address, the coil popped in half and the fire went out. I told the dispatcher this and that maybe they didn't need to come out. She told me to call back if I had any problems.

Fire is a scary thing. I'm so grateful that this was something very small. I was home alone and my main thought during this was "How am I going to get all the animals out safely?" We will be buying a fire extinguisher soon and I will add making up some sort of fire protocol to my list of things to do.