Vacuums and fires do not mix?

Today when I came home I decided it was time to clean. We have sailing stuff from the projects we have done and construction stuff from working on the motel laying around. All this mess is driving me cRazY! So I went to town cleaning. One of the tasks that I did was to vacuum the living room floor. Usually when I am done with this I plug in the extension wand and clean up the ashes around the wood stove. So again that's what I did. I am half way done and the next thing I see is a spray of sparks flying out from the bag. It looked like fireworks spraying out. I turned off the vacuum and the spraying ceased. I yelled for Mark, not too loud since the smoke alarm is going off at this point. He helped me haul the vacuum outside onto the sidewalk.
I told him that it should be fine. No worries. There is only a tiny hole in the material bag. We put a paper vacuum bag inside of that to catch the debris. This shouldn't be a problem.
We all sat down to dinner. Mark had made a ham and bean soup in the crock pot so it had been cooking all day. The house smelled wonderful. After dinner I went to look at the vacuum. Ok, so maybe we won't be able to use it again! Oops!
What cleaning disasters have you had that  you can share that may diminish this in Mark's mind. Grin....
Please help me out here!
Cheers,
Shawnae