During their stop in Chicago, an electrical fire broke out under The Maine’s Garrett Nickelsen’s bunk. It was later learned that the fire was caused by an exposed wire. Luckily, no one was hurt. You can view the damage and what Garrett had to say about the ordeal below.
“Chicago, Chicago, Chicago… I love you but you can hurt so bad! We seem to have some pretty bad luck when we are there. On a tour a few years we had most of the money we made on the whole tour stolen out of our hotel room. ( we were young and dumb) We seemed to learn from that experience and started putting money in the bank. God, we were idiots.
The scariest thing about life are the things you have zero control over. This Chicago experience can be put under that category. We we had two sold out shows at the Bottom Lounge, we went out to celebrate at the bar in the venue. I was feeling pretty tired so Dirk and I headed back to the bus where Pat was already sleeping. As soon as we opened the door the strangest smell rushed into my face. I really had no idea what it smelt like, I thought someone broke a bottle of whiskey. It was a extremely sour and toxic smell. Right away i rushed to wake up Pat because I knew we shouldn’t be breathing in this smell. Shortly after Max and Chris (tour managers) came outside and we all went back onto the bus to try and find the smell. We start searching for where the smell is the strongest. The bunk area was almost impossible to breath anywhere near it. Then we started unplugging all the electronics in every bunk. Dirk yelled at me saying it was the strongest in my bunk. We lifted up my bed and a rush of smoke filled the room. I yelled for the fire extinguisher at Chris. This is when everything gets a little blurry. There were flashes of me putting out the fire and helping pulling my bed of the bus but, it all happened really fast. The bus looked like a bomb went off. Ash was everywhere and smelled like death. The fire had burned through my entire mattress and most of the stuff in my bunk. The fire department came by but since we already put the fire out they left pretty quickly. I’m so happy I got back when we did because if we would have waited another 10 minutes I think we wouldn’t have been as lucky..
Our awesome bus driver Jim spent the whole night searching for what caused the fire and cleaning everything up. After searching through the night he found an exposed wire that caused an electrically fire under my bunk. It was a total freak accident. I’m just happy nothing worse happened.
Well, there is the story for any one who was wondering. Hope we didn’t worry anyone too much! Thank you so much for the two amazing shows Chicago! I’ll never forget how hot you were on stage and on the bus!”
