Woman Accidentally Starts Fire in Friend's Apartment After Putting Boxes on Stove

When you're moving into a new apartment, you'll probably find yourself being careful with just about every appliance and aspect of the place. You'll want to make sure that you didn't lose things in the move and that nothing breaks on you as you try to settle in. Least of all, the last thing you'd want to worry about in a new place is a fire breaking out.

Unfortunately, Kenyen Riley on TikTok (@kenyenriley) dealt with that in the most outlandish way possible.

As Kenyen remembers, a woman who was helping him move in accidentally started a fire after putting boxes on a stove in Kenyen's apartment. He recounts the situation in a laughably avoidable cautionary tale.

In the initial 24-second video, which was posted in early August 2023, the situation is already out of hand. Think that one scene in Community when Donald Glover leaves his apartment for 10 seconds and he returns to see chaos and carnage all around him. Kinda like that.

By the time the short video starts, the fire has already started on the stove. It's a relatively small one, but no one in the apartment knew where the fire extinguisher was. Barely seconds had passed before someone suggested that they pull the fire alarm.

Another person ran out to do so and set the alarm off. The people inside at the time move to vacate the apartment.

Kenyen revealed the whole story in a follow-up video, and honestly, it all sounds a little silly. From what we can tell, Kenyen was with friends of his boyfriend who were helping out with the move.

As far as what led to the fire, someone put cardboard boxes on top of a gas stove as they were moving Kenyen's things into the apartment. That's already a major red flag: don't put cardboard near anything that can create fire unless you, I don't know, want to start a fire. These people learned that the hard way.

From there, someone accidentally bumped a dial on the stove and turned it on. Naturally, the cardboard caught fire and sent everyone inside the apartment at the time into a panic.

Folks in the comments section of the original video were flabbergasted, to say the least. Many questioned the fact that they immediately went for the fire alarm instead of trying to put it out themselves. Despite the emergency they were dealing with, it really wasn't that big of a fire.

"Pull the fire alarm first instinct is WILD, bro," one person commented."

"This is like going to the ER for a paper cut," another person joked.

Sure, a fire in someone else's new apartment isn't something that anyone wants to deal with. But unless the fire starts spreading and people are in actual danger, don't go for the fire alarm as your first instinct. At that point, you're just upending the days of everyone in the apartment over a simple stove fire.

For the record, Kenyen's follow-up revealed that his apartment was, spoiler alert, just fine.