Yeah, I did a post shortly after the fire in hopes people would maybe at least update their insurance and take some precautions about how you store and leave stuff laying around the shop. All of my OSB was covered with a fire-retardant paint well at least 8' up from the floor especially in my welding and grinding shop. I was always worrying that a spark would find its way up under the OSB and the floor. I cut enough 14ga ss sheet metal into strips 7" tall and put them on the bottom of the walls all over the shop so there was no way any sparks could get in there.
I was always sniffing the air for any signs of something smoldering and always did a around the shop look see every evening when I went into the house. This day I was in a hurry after cutting firewood because I was running late for a meeting I had to go to that evening. When you get in a hurry sometimes you just get careless, that's just plain and simple. I think that is the hardest thing I've had to contend with is knowing all my things burned up because of a careless mistake.
Now 4 years later I don't even want to do anything out there because every time I try to do something out there, I get reminded about it because I will have to go out and buy something I already had. I had more plumbing/electrical, nuts bolts and screws than you would find at most hardware stores along with pretty much anything else you might need in a shop.
I replaced a mill a lathe and a huge radial drill press that I had in my old shop and in 31/2 years I haven't done the first job on any of them. I just don't have the spark, pun intended, anymore. I have used some of the welders that I replaced but not like I used to. Thank God I didn't go out and replace all my powder coating equipment, my 5'x10 plasma table and a couple other big-ticket things I had in my shop because that stuff would be sitting around like the thousands of dollars' worth of other stuff that I did replace.
Yeah, I'm crying the blues I know but most of it now is that I hope some other person reads this and stops and thinks about the stuff you have, where and how it is stored along with maybe inventorying your stuff in case something happens. I'll bet good money not a single person here has an idea of just what and how much stuff we keep in our shops. Also take a look at your insurance policy's just to be sure you are covered. Put rider policies on your big-ticket stuff and keep an updated list of the things you have because there is no way of you will remember all this stuff if something happens. I took me 1 1/2 years of dealing with the insurance companies and there are a thousand things I missed. I missed them until I now go to do a small job now and all I can say is damn I had one of those.
