How Not to Fix Frozen Pipes

Md. Man's Mishap Illustrates the Danger of Using Flames

"I feel hopeful," Madeline Woodland, 81, said as she surveyed damage to the house she has lived in for 45 years. "My family will help rebuild." Her son Charles "Junior" Woodland, 63, used a torch to try to thaw a copper pipe carrying kerosene to a furnace in the Charles County home. (By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)

If he could do it again, Charles "Junior" Woodland said of the home repair project gone awry, he wouldn't try to thaw frozen pipes with a propane torch.

"I would have left it alone," Woodland, 63, said recently, recalling the fire that destroyed part of his Southern Maryland home.

Every winter, people across the nation burn down all or part of their homes this way. The phenomenon is rare, but it led to the death last month of an 86-year-old Wyoming man, and it prompts warnings from the American Red Cross, insurance companies and fire departments.

"Never use a torch!" the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department advises on the frozen-pipe section of its Web site. Department spokesman Dan Schmidt said Fairfax sees an average of one such fire a year, adding, "The sensible thing is to call in a plumber."

But like many weekend handymen, Woodland figured he would give it a shot. He lives in a one-story, three-bedroom house owned by his mother, Madeline Woodland, 81, in the Bel Alton community of Charles County.

Madeline also lives there, having moved in 45 years ago. She raised all but the oldest of her 15 children inside. They come back for gatherings, including at Christmas, squeezing more than 50 bodies inside. "She is the glue that holds us together," one of Madeline's daughters, Thelma Woodland, likes to say.

On the morning of Dec. 8, the temperature dipped below 24 degrees. At 11 a.m., Madeline sat in her living room, sorting her more than 10 medications for diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments. Her son became convinced an outside pipe was frozen.

Limping from a car wreck years ago, he walked outside to the north side of the house, blocked from the sun. A five-foot storage tank held kerosene, which was fed via copper pipe to a furnace in the house.

On the ground: a blue electrically-heated cord, designed to wrap around pipes to prevent freezing. The cord had been removed during repairs to the tank. Woodland had meant to reattach it. Now it was too brittle. He got his torch.

Fire prevention experts interviewed said they do not track how many fires start this way.

In Maryland, deputy state fire marshal Jason Mowbray estimated that his agency handles one or two such fires a year but said that probably was a conservative statewide total, because his agency investigates only certain fires. A dozen years ago, Mowbray said, a Western Maryland man was torching frozen pipes when his house blew up because of a gas leak, and he was killed.

In Virginia, state Fire Marshal Ed Altizer said the fires have popped up occasionally in his more than 30-year career. "It's been a problem for us for that entire time," he said.