Fire Starts While Toddler Has Mum Locked In The Basement

For every parent whose child has locked them somewhere (anywhere) and they can’t get out, I have news for you: it could be worse.

A New Hampshire mother went into her basement to do a load of laundry, and her two-year-old son somehow managed to lock the door with her still in the basement. Then she smelled smoke.

Jodi McKenzie told reporters she grabbed a sledgehammer in the basement and literally smashed her way through the door to get to her son and get the two of them out of the house (which, sadly, burned to the ground).

Somehow, people who have never had kids (or at least babysat for kids) don’t seem to understand how they can lock you somewhere – note the first comment here, an automatic attack on the mother for not watching her son every second the day. News flash: you can be WATCHING your child as they lock you out of your own house. I was standing on my front porch, phone in my hand, when my then-two-year-old decided to close the front door on me as a joke. Then she turned the lock.

I had been looking straight at her through the screen door, but I didn’t think she could spin the lock in the knob yet, and by the time I realized it, it was too late. By a fluke, our spare key had been borrowed by my parents and wasn’t where I keep it, but fortunately I had the phone – so I spent twenty minutes standing at the door, talking to my daughter to keep her standing there, while I waited for my husband to drive home from work with his own set of keys.

It made me set up extra precautions, including an extra key for the neighbor. This story, however, makes me wonder if I missed the bigger risks – the doors that lock INSIDE the house.

Image: NECN.com