| OCR Text |
Show 6 - BUSY TIMES - JUNE 1992 FIRE, continued from Page 1 RS. on Sun/Jugs/Fire: garbage, and then I remembered that we had had house guests just a few On July 10, 1990, an unusually cool, overcast day for July, I was working on my computer when I heard a noise I thought must be an airliner flying low over the valley. I went on days earlier, and I concluded that one of them must have thrown the bottle away. Then the light bulb went on in my brain, and I realized what must have started the fire. The glass bottle, sitting on top of the pile of trash in the can, had concentrated the sun‘s rays like a lense and focused them so as to create a spot of heat on some combus- tible material (probably paper) sufficiently intense to ignite iL This is a variation of the survival trick many of us learned to perform with a magnifying glass or mirror and a pile of dry leaves. Needless to say, we were very lucky. The fire occurred on a day when the breeze was light, and during a period when the surrounding area was mostly green and damp. Had something like this happened on a typical summer afternoon, when the surrounding area was tinder dry and thermal winds were whipping around the valley, it could have been a disaster, certainly for our house and possibly for others as well. Anyone who has ever seen a wildfire knows how devastating they can be, and no one who was here in the summer of 1980 (when there were two of them) is likely to forget the sight of a 20-30 foot wall of flame marching inexorably down the valley, pushed by the wind. One house was burned to the ground in minutes, and only the fact that there were far fewer houses then prevented others from suffering the same fate. The lesson to be derived form this incident is obvious. I would encourage everyone to recycle their glass, especially since it is now more convenient than ever to do locally. If you are not inclined to do that, please cover typing. Then I became conscious of some other loud noises and Milly yelling. I th0ught maybe she was shouting at the plane, as we sometimes tended to do. I walked through the building to the driveway on the southwest of the house, following her voice. Then I saw Milly’s old green pick—up with a huge fireworks display going off in back. Milly ran inside to call the fire department and our neighbors. Iran toward the truck. There was a series of very loud hissing sounds and explosions, accompanied by columns of fire shooting up into the sky. The large juniper started to burn and was gone in seconds. The breeze changed, taking the fire quickly over to some large sages. Another few minutes and the truck was consumed. Everything was happening very fast Neighbors had come running, taking over the hose I was training on the fire so I could bring down the other one from up by the pump house. The hose wouldn’t unscrew, but I kept trying until my hands started to bleed. I didn’t feel a thing, I just wanted that hose. Only twelve minutes after Milly's call, the fire truck arrived. Nothing much left to save, but it was a blessing to know the fire wasn’t going any further. All that was left inside the truck were the upholstery springs and a charred steering wheel. The tires melted. We really appreciated everyone's help. The fire crew stayed until everything cooled down. We knew we were extremely lucky—no strong winds that day, not like they had been. And Milly's truck hadn't been near the house as it often was. What started it? Four clear glass gallon jugs of Matrimony Springs water sitting in a cardboard box on a cloudy day in the back of a pick-up truck. The sun wasn’t putting out much heat, but it was enough to ignite the cardboard, explode the bottles, burn the wood pallets that were back there, setting off the two freshly-filled propane tanls and the 20 gallon gas tank, filled right beforeMilly retumed from Moab not much more than a couple of hours before. Usually she w0uld have unloaded the water to get it out of the sun, but the sun just didn’t seem hot that day, and we got talking. Oh yes, I’d heard the warnings before, and I didn’t take them very seriously. It didn’t make sense to me that something as innocent as a gallon of water could cause any problems. —Cris Coffey your garbage containers or do whatever else is necessary to ensure that such “spontaneous combustion” cannot happen. I wanted to share this story with as many people as I could, so that they might be aware that such a thing is possible. Such a possibility never even crossed my mind until it actually occurred, and I feel fortunate to have learned my lesson while suffering almost no consequences (other than stinking up the place for a while). Let’s make sure that it does not happen again, when the consequences might be considerably worse. —John Groo l‘Jared Euler: at age 10 |
