And you thought you had a bad day.
(this was an article in the CALIFORNIA EXAMINER, March 20, 1998):
Fire Authorities in California found a corpse in a burnt out
section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. The
deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with a dive tank,
flippers, and face mask. A post-mortem examination revealed that the
person died not from burns but from massive internal injuries. Dental
records provided a positive identification. Investigators then set
about determining how a fully-clad diver ended up in the middle of a
forest fire. It was revealed that, on the day of the fire, the person
went for a diving trip off the coast-some 20 miles away from the forest.
The firefighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible,
called in a fleet of helicopters with very large buckets. The buckets
were dropped into the ocean for rapid filling, then flown to the forest
fire and emptied. You guessed it. One minute our diver was making like
Flipper in the Pacific, the next he was doing a breaststroke in a fire
bucket 300 feet in the air. Apparently, he extinguished exactly 5'10"
of the fire. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. |
