Irene Pearson isn’t in the habit of sharing whatever troubles come her way.
At 79, the Marysville widow would rather do volunteer work or lend a hand to a favorite political candidate than dwell on problems.
“I am a very private person,” she said. “The key is to help others. If you reach out and help, you can’t help but get a blessing back.”
Hoping to spare others from a danger she experienced, Pearson is setting privacy aside. She’s sharing a frightening story about a seemingly safe item: a beanbag pillow.
She’s not sure what brand of pillow she had, or what it was stuffed with. All she knows for certain is that on the night of Jan. 22 she put it in her microwave oven, as she’d done many times. When she placed it in her bed as a foot-warmer, it caught fire.
Pearson is left with a burned mattress, smoke damage in her home, and a mess outside where she hauled smoldering bedding through a sliding door to her patio. Worse, she spent five days at Providence Everett Medical Center’s Colby campus, where she was treated for smoke inhalation. While there, it was discovered that an existing heart problem needed further treatment.
She’s now home, recovering from fire-related lung problems and a heart-stent-placement procedure.
Over coffee Wednesday, she talked about the ordeal, knowing there must be others who use their pillows as warmers.
“It was a gift,” Pearson said of her beanbag pillow. “I don’t think it was filled with rice or beans. I don’t know what it was, maybe buckwheat.” A scorched pile of seeds in the debris outside is all that’s left of it.
Pearson said she normally put the pillow in the microwave for three minutes on regular power. “I looked at it as kind of a little luxury. You want to pamper yourself, get your tootsies warm,” she said. The night of the fire, “it was cold in my house. I gave it five minutes,” she said.
She went to bed about 10 p.m. An hour later, she got up to use the restroom. Returning to her bedroom, she smelled something awful.
“I pulled the sheets back, and I could not believe my eyes — and my nose,” she said. “The smell was overpowering. Smoke billowed out of my bedspread and sheets. It filled the room instantaneously.
“I wasn’t afraid,” she said, attributing her calm to her Christian faith. “I opened my back door and took the bedding, everything rolled up, the comforter and sheets, and threw them out. The minute I threw them out, they ignited. There were flames everywhere.”
Before calling 911, she poured water on her mattress, which was still in her bedroom. “It had a humongous hole in the middle,” she said.
Within minutes, three vehicles from the Marysville Fire Department arrived. “Two people were attending me, there were two in my house and two in my back yard,” she said. “They came quickly and went to work like you would not believe.”
Marysville Fire Marshal Jerry Jacobsen didn’t know the details of what happened at Pearson’s house but said the incident is a reminder to always read instructions. “And always stop and think. Treat anything that can make heat the way you’d treat a loaded gun — it could ignite,” he said.
While Pearson isn’t sure what type of pillow she had, a customer service representative with a Seattle company that makes buckwheat-filled pillows said fire is a possibility if pillows are improperly heated.
“Our products do come with safety warnings,” said Mary O’Keefe, who works for Bucky Inc. The company has been selling pillows and neck wraps stuffed with buckwheat seeds since 1992, in stores and online. The seeds are slightly smaller than popcorn kernels.
Only one line of Bucky products, called “Hotties,” are safe to heat in the microwave, O’Keefe said. They can also be put in the freezer to make cold packs.
“The instructions say to heat them, like, two minutes, and the microwave should have a turntable. It’s like popcorn. If you think two minutes isn’t enough, five can be too much,” O’Keefe said. “We’ve had a few calls, people saying their Hotties got scorched.”
Other pillows, with zippers and polyester, can burn, O’Keefe said. “It says there’s a risk of fire. We try to warn as much as possible.”
Pearson wants that warning more widely known.
“I stand there and gawk at it,” she said of the fire damage at her house. “It’s horrid. People need to know.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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