Forest Fire
“No junk food, just earthly goods
I ate weird berries in the woods
Now I’m seeing colors, I’m getting higher
I think I’ll start a forest fire”
- The Dead Kennedys
No plumbing for me last night.
To make a long story short, my in-laws are selectively logging a lot of the pine off their 100 acres. The logger’s bulldozer broke down and caught fire. We’re in the middle of drought and the average afternoon temperature has been around 100 degrees. The underbrush caught fire. A slight breeze carried it up a gully toward the top of Crow Mountain. Volunteer fire departments from all over Pope County came out to control the blaze.
My wife and I were concerned about my in-laws house. We kept calling but no one was answering the phone. A low cloud of smoke hung over the Devil Queen's neighborhood. Around 6:30 PM I went over to see if everything was okay. As a real feel good, I passed several fire trucks heading towards the Devil Queen on my way over to their house. Fortunately, everything was okay. They’d all been outside building a firebreak around the house to be on the safe side, so they were a little too busy to worry about phone calls.
Never a dull moment.
It could have been much worse. The fire didn’t get big enough to light the trees. If the fire ever makes it to the tree tops, you can pretty well kiss your ass good-bye. Since the wind was pretty light, we really lucked out. If the wind was stronger, the fire could have easily raced up the gully, jumped to the top of the mountain, and burned the Devil Queen's subdivision completely down.
Here is a piss poor map of it. The dark green line represents the top of the mountain. The fuzzy green is supposed to be the wooded slope down the side of the mountain. Once you get down to the bottom (were all the roads are) the ground is fairly flat.
I ate weird berries in the woods
Now I’m seeing colors, I’m getting higher
I think I’ll start a forest fire”
- The Dead Kennedys
No plumbing for me last night.
To make a long story short, my in-laws are selectively logging a lot of the pine off their 100 acres. The logger’s bulldozer broke down and caught fire. We’re in the middle of drought and the average afternoon temperature has been around 100 degrees. The underbrush caught fire. A slight breeze carried it up a gully toward the top of Crow Mountain. Volunteer fire departments from all over Pope County came out to control the blaze.
My wife and I were concerned about my in-laws house. We kept calling but no one was answering the phone. A low cloud of smoke hung over the Devil Queen's neighborhood. Around 6:30 PM I went over to see if everything was okay. As a real feel good, I passed several fire trucks heading towards the Devil Queen on my way over to their house. Fortunately, everything was okay. They’d all been outside building a firebreak around the house to be on the safe side, so they were a little too busy to worry about phone calls.
Never a dull moment.
It could have been much worse. The fire didn’t get big enough to light the trees. If the fire ever makes it to the tree tops, you can pretty well kiss your ass good-bye. Since the wind was pretty light, we really lucked out. If the wind was stronger, the fire could have easily raced up the gully, jumped to the top of the mountain, and burned the Devil Queen's subdivision completely down.
Here is a piss poor map of it. The dark green line represents the top of the mountain. The fuzzy green is supposed to be the wooded slope down the side of the mountain. Once you get down to the bottom (were all the roads are) the ground is fairly flat.
posted by John | 3:35 AM
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