Fire Week Story... # ???
This one didn't end up being very funny... Don't know if it's worth telling... Hmmm....
A few years ago, we had a big drought in this area... weeks and weeks without rain. Then we had high temperatures and continuous hot, dry winds...
One afternoon I was out putting clothes on the line and I suddenly thought that I could smell smoke... Not a lot, but just the suggestion of it.
I looked around and tried to figure out where it was coming from. Couldn't see the source at first, but then I saw a few flames coming out of the kitchen windows of the big old farmhouse.
For a minute, I didn't quite know what to do, but then I ran and called the fire department. That might have taken all of about 2 minutes. By the time I came back out of the house, there were flames coming out through the roof of the house.
But the wind was very strong and it sort of "bent" the flames towards the old dairy barn which was quite a distance from the house. WIthin...hmmmm... perhaps a minute, the loft of the barn was burning... seeming to have been ignited just from the intense heat of the fire in the house.
It was pretty scary because the fields were very dry... just like tinder... and we have a lot of pine forests around the house... and they were very dried out from the heat. Within minutes, the air was so thick which smoke that it would choke you... And the heat, even from a couple of thousand feet away was...uncomfortable. I was concerned about our livestock, and became worried as I saw how the wind was blowing burning embers down on the fields.
Firetrucks soon showed up... I think there were eventually 5 or 6... They started out with 2, but then called fore reinforcements.
To get an idea of the heat from the fire, a hay baler had been left out the field about 300 feet from the barn, and while I was watching, a bale of hay left inside of it started to smoke and then burst into flames and then the baler when on fire and was entirely burnt up in just a couple of minutes...
Fire got into the grass and was spreading all over, but eventually it was extinguished. But the old smoking ruins of the barn smoldered for days.. |
