Have you ever had to use a fire extinguisher for its intended use?

It had been raining, and my neighbor was using a gas grill inside his attached garage. He had it pushed up close to the wall and had a flare up that caught something he had hanging on the wall on fire. I grabbed one of the fire extinguishers that I keep in my garage and ran over. He had pulled the grill away from the wall and closed its lid so I just blasted the fire on the wall near the ceiling. Damn it made quite a powdery mess. I'm glad I didn't have to clean it up, but it's better than burning the house down.

i didn't personally use it but i handed one off for someone else to use.

i was sitting at the computer surfing the internet when smoke started to come out of the bathroom which was next to the computer. i went into the bathroom and there was smoke coming from under the toilet... now a toilet isn't something you usually see with smoke coming out of it.

i walked over to the basement door and asked my father what the hell he was doing down there and he said he was using a torch to thaw out the frozen pipes when whoooosh all the cobwebs in the basement went up in flames.

luckily i was home since i was the only person who knew there the extinguisher was.

I never have. we have used them to teach my cub scouts how to use one on a contained fire in a fire pit. It was a good learning experience for them.

Yes! When I was younger, my mom left her closet light on. A pile of clothing had slipped from the top shelf and was sitting up against the light bulb. Needless to say, it caught fire. I smelled smoke at like 3:00 am and went to investigate. I eventually opened her closet to see the small flame. I woke her up and we used the fire extinguisher.

I've used a fire extinguisher for its intended purpose twice that I can recall right off the top of my head. I worked in a grocery store for about a month. On my last day, my manager, who had already done a number of idiotic things in our brief time together, managed to start a grease fire in the bakery. She asked me how to change the grease in the deep fryer and I told her. She then insisted on doing it a different way, resulting in the fire. I grabbed the extinguisher and put out the fire. Instead of firing my idiotic manager, the store manager fired ME, for defending myself loudly, in front of customers, when the idiotic manager tried to blame me for the fire. She was gone within a week anyway, and I immediately got a much better summer job.

The other time was less dramatic. I was helping a friend soup up a car. He was worried that some modification he had made might cause an engine fire, and he asked me to stand by with the extinguisher in case the engine caught fire while he sat in the driver's seat, revving the engine. He was right: flames shot out of the carburetor and I immediately hit the engine with flame retardant.

Yeah, we had a wood-burning fire go a wee bit out of control and had to use it. Didn't make a big deal out of it.

I have used one for safety training, not a dangerous situation

Nope, the only unintentional fire I caused was really small, so I just put it out with the hose (lit a piece of paper on fire)