Pete, glad that you and your family are OK. Sorry to hear of any losses, no matter how small.
The timing of this is incredible! The past few weeks, we were noticing that our clothes were not getting dry in the dryer. It is 19 yrs old, and I just thought maybe its time was up. Last weekend, at my wife's insistence, I checked our rigid metal vent pipe....it was plugged up solid for about 2 feet
I couldn't believe how much lint I got out of it, especially since we are religious about cleaning the lint trap. It all had a kind of gummy feel, undoubtedly from those dryer sheets
Sure glad we didn't have a fire
