http://tsniderdvm.blogspot.com/2019/08/about-fire-part-1-70-yr-anniversary-of.html
I'm a bit of a fire-bug. I enjoy building the fire in the fireplace. I enjoy building the fire at a campsite. I enjoy controlled, prescribed burns. I'm frequently burning brush piles.
I'm generally safe with fire, though my track record would testify otherwise. Some of the problems with fire that I have encountered have resulted in life lessons. Many of my memories of fire involve my dad, as well. Some of those memories are, in no particular order:
- Trash burning: Growing up, my family didn't have a rural trash service between Cache and Lawton. Like many, we burned trash in steel 55 gallon drums. It was my job as a teenager, and I did it well. I did it so well, I inevitably sought out new fire experiences. Such it was one day when I thought I would burn some brush near the burn barrels. I have no recollection of the wind that day, but it must have been breezy. All I remember is a little experiment quickly grew out of control, and we soon had neighbors over at our place stomping, raking, and fighting my little experiment gone awry. Lesson: Know the wind and humidity. Be prepared with tools.
- Spontaneous combustion of bread products: My FFA SAE project was raising pigs. At my peak, I was farrowing 4-5 sows twice a year, which meant we ended up with about 40-50 pigs on feed that we were not showing. This meant a massive feed bill for a small project, and I looked for ways to cut costs. Circa 1984-1987, one could purchase 'racks' and 'half racks' of day old bread and other bakery products from the Lawton Wonder Bread outlet for pennies. To reach some sort of economy of scale, we would purchase as many 'racks' a half ton pickup bed would fit, go home, and spend the evening stuffing old feedsacks with varieties of bread, Twinkies, donuts, gems, HoHos, DingDongs, and so forth. Though we were initially discouraged from doing so, we (Holly and I) quickly learned that the day old sweets were still quite edible and bread night often turned into an impromptu (unhealthy) meal. So, thus far in the story, I've outlined a labor intensive feeding strategy for pigs that was effectively free. Summers in Southwest Oklahoma are BRUTAL. One summer Saturday in the mid-1980s, post-lunch, Dad and I were doing some afternoon TV watching --> in rural 1980s Southwest Oklahoma with three channels, our choices were golf, an infomercial, or an old John Wayne movie. So with the John Wayne movie halfway done, our day was suddenly interrupted by someone beating on our front door. My dad rushed to the door to be met by a man with an urgent message: our barn was on fire, and my dad's pickup was parked right next to it. The cause of the fire? The high starch of the stuffed and compressed bread products, all stacked next to each other on a 105F Oklahoma day had spontaneously combusted and caught everything else on fire. For those with hay experience, it was like putting up round bales of hay with 20% moisture content. My most vivid memory is my dad heroically rushing to his pickup next to the fully engulfed barn, driver's door closest to the flames, him burning his hand on the hot door handle, and him driving the pickup away to safety. Then, there was nothing left but to watch it burn. And listen, too.....Dad's Marlin .22 was in there with about 200 rounds of .22 ammo, and it all started popping. And smell, too.....about 600 pounds of burning bread and other bakery products. Lesson: Know spontaneous combustion. Don't stockpile bread in the summer time.
- Dad having a small heart attack fighting a fire in his 70s: I wasn't home for this one. Dad had had heart disease the last 10-12 years of his life - stents and statins. I think it was February 2017. I don't know how the fire started, but I think it was similar to story #1 above. Dad was hustling around dragging garden hoses trying to fight it. Hours later, he was in the hospital with a reported mild heart attack. Two months later, he successfully emerged from quintuple bypass surgery. Lesson: Don't fight fire in your 70s.
- Property clean up at my parent's house the day my father passed away: My father passed away at 12:04am Dec. 16, 2018, in Lawton, OK. After the initial bawling and grieving, I sought distractions that Sunday morning while awaiting the incoming visitors and family. My distraction largely was to do what I was going to do anyway - clean up my parent's place around the barn. Beginning around 7:30am, I had conquered a half acre unmowed field, and had a few round bale's worth of accumulated grass clippings in several piles, along with piles of limbs that needed burned. Relying upon my success and experience with 100s of brush fires outside Stillwater, OK, I started a brush fire near the barn. In Stillwater, OK, it is the land of "liquid air" about 300 days per year. As long as there has been a recent rain and we are not in a burn ban, one can usually do any sort of burn in NE Oklahoma quite safely. Indeed, there are some days you can't even get a fire started because the dewpoint is so high. Not so in Southwest Oklahoma. Drawing upon my teenage experience where I started a big grass fire, and also monitoring two different weather apps, I started the fire, got it 90% surrounded by black, had been spraying water intermittently on top of it and around it, and I thought I was making progress quite safely. Needing a break and recognizing an increasing visitor count, I left the fire to run to the house to greet a few people, drink some water, and use the restroom. Minutes later, glancing out the back door, I noticed that my fire had grown....and grown....and grown. I yelled something and rushed out the door. Long story shortened: We got the fire under control. My wife lost a pair of shoes. Some clothing was ruined. The barn was intact. A fuel tank was melted and the 2 gallons of fuel remaining nearly ignited. The lawn tractor was saved. Examining the burn path of expansion from the central fire, it is clear that this fire tracked along the surface of dead thatch sitting ON TOP OF A PUDDLE OF WATER. Lesson: Just like oil on water, fire can burn grass sitting on top of water.
- A recent brush pile burn that did fine, but burned without my knowledge: This happened just the other day. North Central Oklahoma received about 3.5 inches of rain on Aug 2 and 3, 2019. I tried to get a brush fire going in the morning of Aug 4 (Sunday). I got the tinder and some feed sacks going, but could not get the brush (saturated from two days rain) to catch. Eventually, I gave up, saw that it smoldered the next 3-4 hours, helped Julie with some goats from 11am-1:15pm, and at that point no smoldering smoke was detected. I ate lunch, took a nap, watched a movie, went back outside 7pm. Where has all the brush gone? Sometime between 1:15pm and 7pm, this 'dead' fire with piles of rain-soaked brush fuel had ignited and successfully burned 90% of the brush. With the pile surrounded by lush Bermuda grass and the atmosphere composed of about 3000% humidity, there was no chance it was going anywhere, but I was stunned that it caught fire at all. Lesson: Where there's smoke, there's fire. Indirect lesson: This is why Forest Service guides tell backpackers to DROWN a fire.
So the five lessons I've learned from these stories:
1. Know the present weather conditions. Have tools at the ready.
2. Recognize moisture contributions to heat generation and the possibility of spontaneous combustion.
3. Don't fight fire in your 70s.
4. Fire can burn things near or on top of water. Not just oil....even grass.
5. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Drown the fire when done.
