Burning down the house

On Thursday night, my house caught on fire.
Putting it that way makes it sound much more serious than it was. So here's what went down.

Mark woke me up at around 2:45 in the morning. "Something's burning," he said.
To which I responded, "No it's not. Go back to sleep."
Keep in mind that I was, in fact, asleep, and really dislike being awakened.
"No, our room is full of smoke!" he said.
The panic in his voice cut through the sleep, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that a thin haze filled our room. It smelled pretty good, like our house was made out of Nag Champa.
We live in an old house and our heating unit is one of those dinosaur metal jobbies buried in the hardwood floor. When I poked my head into the hallway, I could see a thick column of smoke rising from the floor beside it.
Mark collected his dog, Arrow, and headed for the front porch. I dawdled at the computer for a few minutes, trying to figure out if the fire department had a non-emergency number.
In the end, I called 911, and as soon as I hung up, I could hear the sirens converging on our house. Four trucks arrived, plus a police car. The firefights crawled under our house, but to get to the blaze, they had to cut a neat parabola into the hall floor.
It wasn't a big fire, just a few floor joists ignited by the heater. The firemen hung around for about an hour, pointing their infrared cameras at the walls and floors. They swept up after themselves and left a small pile of charred wood on our porch.
The boyfriend, dog and I eventually drifted back to sleep. We've put the heater out of its misery, and will be using a constellation of space heaters to get through the rest of the winter.
Thanks to the Greensboro Fire Department for their quick response.