It Only Hurts When I Blog

Greetings, Pyro-Blognicians!

Charlie wrote up today's blog entry on my request. Thank you Charlie!

Bottom Line: In the past year, our next door neighbor has had TWO runaway fires on his property - thankfully not jumping over to ours! Let's see, TWO means he didn't LEARN from the FIRST ONE, doesn't it?

(roll sound clip of the Wicked Witch of the West saying 'How 'bout a little FIRE, Scarecrow?')

Begin Story:

Last fall (2005) our neighbor landowner to the south did some clearing on his land. He piled up some brush and started a fire. He watched it for the afternoon, determined it was safe to leave, and went home. When high winds moved in later, some warm embers ignited and blew into the dry grass. The fire was on!

It took the Volunteer Fire Department and forestry service to get it under control. Several acres were scorched, a few good trees lost, and the flames even did some damage to another neighbor’s woods. We were relieved that it wasn’t near our place.

Advance to this fall, September 2006. Same neighbor.

Pyro-neighbor decides to burn a small brush pile to make a spot for an upcoming wiener roast. (Never mind that we are having drought conditions and that it’s windy). It doesn’t take long for the fire to start to spread through the dry grass.

Pyro-neighbor decides that he can control the fire with a leaf rake. When that doesn’t do the job, he starts running over the flames with his tractor. I’m not sure how he prevented the tractor from burning.

Looking back, he notices that the wind has caused the flames to spread behind him, so he quickly spins the tractor around to head off those flames. But he forgot something – sitting in the front-end loader of the tractor is a chainsaw and open gasoline container. The quick spin launches these items from the loader, and gasoline is thrown in a stream over the fire.

Perhaps you’ve heard the expression “throwing gasoline onto a fire.” It works; that is, it works if you want a suddenly bigger fire. So now this Smokey-Bear-wannabe has a roaring blaze going with no means to control it.

Another call to the Volunteer Fire Department brings out the forces that get everything back under control.

The good news is that only a small area burned, an acre or so. What could have turned into bad news is that this fire was much closer to our property line, not very far from our house and barn. I was extremely happy when the firefighters contained the blaze and it had not spread to our property.

Hopefully this is the end of the story. Surely pyro-neighbor has learned something from all this. I just hope that it’s more than the phone number for the fire department!

That's it for today, folks! Be careful and don't play with fire!