On Almost Dying in a Fire and/or Earthquake

Hysteria first, backstory later:

OMG, WTF:

What you see are the charred remains of the inside face of the drywall and the charred top plate where the in-wall furnace used to be. The drywall is just white in that one spot because it crumbles and falls apart when touched. This is all very bad and very scary, but we are all fine. 

Okay, backstory:

Today Dad and Devon finished with the drywall sanding and mudding at 4:00ish, so they decided to start in on the pantry framing. The pantry was on the "nice to have" list in terms of things to do while Dad is here, but since nothing much can happen while the mud is drying in the kitchen, there's a little time to work on it. 

There was an old boxed-in chase in the hall just outside the kitchen. Long ago there was a furnace in the crawl space, plus the kitchen stove vented into this chase at some point, plus maybe something else. Anyway, nothing in there is in use anymore, so it was just taking up space. The grand plan was to take out the vent pipes, take out the in-wall furnace, build a pantry, and install another form of heat (something hydronic, possibly underfloor). We had the demo guys remove the actual vent pipes (one was transite - not something we wanted to touch), but we still had the heater and the framing from the chase. We don't have a full plan in place for the new heat system yet, but since it's not that cold and the old heater wasn't that good anyway, we decided we can get by with electric mattress pads and maybe some electric space heaters for awhile. 

After much cursing and muttering, Dad and Devon got the furnace out.

We discovered a pretty shocking number of horrible things upon removing it. First of all, the vent pipe wasn't insulated and/or wasn't placed/braced properly. It was obviously getting way too hot, hot enough to char the drywall and the framing.

Next, the framing is a total disaster. This is the most major bearing wall in the house, and both top plates are completely missing. 

It looks like they were removed by chewing, or perhaps with a dull butter knife. Super shoddy. 

The bottom plate is also completely missing. There was no need to remove it! Just put the heater on top of it! As Devon was cutting a clean line in the drywall (to make patching easier), the stud he was cutting down the middle of fell out of the wall. It wasn't continuous, but instead there was some random cross member and then a little cripple stud that just went to the subfloor since the plate is missing. And it was obviously not nailed to any of the other framing. Here's the random cross member and cripple after the stud fell out:

Ugh, such a mes. 

So that's where we're at. We have no heat, we have an extra little doorway to the hallway, and we have some framing to patch up, but we did not die in a fire or an earthquake. Upside!