Peat fire

[Sauna freak]

Well, Saturday my cabin neighbor called me up and ruined a perfectly good day of pike fishing .  He'd burned a good bonfire the evening before, and went to check on it and found about 100 square feet of swampland downwind smoking and covered with a brownish fine ash and putting out pretty good heat and a little smoke.  Evidently he'd had a few too many beers and thrown on a bit too much balsam fir boughs on, and spotted into the swamp.  Knowing I have a history of firefighting, and not wanting to notify the local authorities, naturally he called me.  Fortunately I had the gear and knowledge to help, and we actually made pretty quick work of it.  Dragged my generator and a 1/2 horse pump out there, and told him to get all of his garden hose and shovels.  We were able to pump from a small drainage ditch to the site, while he made mud pies and I supervised.  He always wanted to quit before the hotspots were opened up, cooled down and thoroughly soaked and churned.  Greenhorns are entertaining when dealing with burning peat.  On the bright side, I can now bowhunt his back forty and I never again have to bring beer when I come visit.

Anyone else have some interesting "ahem" unofficial wildland firefighting experience?  I think the statute of limitations on arson by negligence is 5 years if no one died, so lets hear some stories!

[mike_belben]

Oh ive got 5 or 6.  Lemme rest up

[Stephen1]

Not wild land. 
My 1st house had an old chicken barn 40x50 2 floors and it had not been cleaned in a while, 2-3' of chicken [I have typed a profane word that is automatically changed by the forum censored words program I should know better] and sawdust. Well I moved it all outside to a big pile, it took a few months, but I came home from work one day to find the local fire department there digging the pile as it had started burning. Spontaneous combustion! 

[mike_belben]

That is some hot compost!

[firefighter ontheside]

Arson is only if you set the fire on purpose with the intention of burning something down or up in the case of wildland.  What he did is more like negligence and would still be responsible, but not arson.  It's a question of premeditation.  

I was working in the Boundary Waters many years ago driving a boat on Saganaga Lake.  I think it was 1994 and we had a big fire that started south of Sag and went on into Canada.  Instead of driving the boat carrying canoes, I ferried firefighters and their gear around for 2 weeks.  That was a good time.  That's what made me want to do wildland firefighting.

[Texas Ranger]

I enjoyed fire fighting, until the first crown over.  Brought a sense of introspection into the methodology I had been using.

[sawguy21]

Those are terrifying to watch with their speed! Forget outrunning them. I once got called in with my construction crew to contain a wildland fire that had been started by an overturned propane truck, we had to hold it until a crawler was walked in from a road construction site. No water bombers in those days and no low bed available. We were provincial government parks service, most of the crew were American draft dodgers.. The most useless bunch I have ever dealt with.

[Wudman]

I can come up with a few of these after a lifetime of playing with fire.  I had one to burn under a creek.  That was pretty interesting.  We were using a small creek (probably 10 feet wide bank to bank) as a line.  The fire had died down and I was walking the perimeter and I see a Roman Candle across the creek from our burn.  There was a pine stump on the creek bank that had ignited and the fire followed an underground root under the creek and up on the other side.  It was getting a pretty good draft and blowing fire.  Wet set a pump up and flooded it to get it out.  Cool.

I had another to burn across water.  It was late in the fall and we were doing a site prep burn.  We had tied our lines into a swamp with plenty of open water.  Conducting final recon for the night, I see fire creeping across a small island in the swamp.  Maple leaves had fallen on the water.  They had not soaked up the water and fire walked across the water supported by those leaves.  There were little patches of ash still floating and you could see the path it walked across.  Pretty neat.

Hired a contractor to conduct my burning one year.  They hired a labor crew that was a little too high strung for this line of work.  We were back firing a line to get a working buffer.  It was hot and dry and things were a little sketchy to begin with.  I looked up the hill and saw 13 men coming dragging fire.  They were lighting up 100 acres at once.  I was standing beside the supervisor.  He was a little on the heavy side.  I suggested that he head out to the state road.  I would stay there and watch the last man get out.  They put so much heat on that hill that fire devils were running everywhere.  I was watching one come down the hill and it hit a creek bottom.  Sweetgums were dancing like a tornado.  There wasn't anything I could do at that moment, so I headed to the road.  A farmer came down the highway with a load of corn.  "Is this your fire?"  Me - Yeah.  "It doesn't really matter to me, but you have a spot in my cornfield."  I drive up the road about a half mile and there is a spot fire in the middle of the field he had just cut.  I start toward it, when I noticed something farther north.  There was a hollow poplar another 1/4 mile north of me.  The top was broken out of it and an ember had landed in it.  She was blasting fire like a hot chimney fire.  There is a 75 foot Roman Candle in this case.  We chased fire for half the night.  Contractor ended up paying for about 10 acres of young pine plantation that he burned.  He retired from the burning business thereafter.

Had another fire that we had a jump.  We caught it under a 25 year old pine stand.  No damage done.  It did cause a little needle scorch.  After about 10 days, the needles dropped.  I get a call for smoke in the area.  Go up there to find the fire had walked across the containment line on the dropped needles.  Traced the origin back to a stump hole that was burning from the original jump.  Got about 25 acres of free burning that time around.

We had a red flag day here in Virginia back in February 2008.  It was a low humidity day with a front coming through with hurricane force winds.  I was working a tree job on the weekend for a Department of Forestry dozer operator / mechanic.  He came out of the house and told me he was heading to an escaped prescribed burn lit three days prior.  I said to my Dad, "I don't think I would have lit that fire looking at the weather forecast."  I hadn't gotten the words out of my mouth good when my phone rang.  It was the county forester.  "Jeff, you have a fire on the Coppermine Tract."  I hopped in my truck and headed the 25 miles to the tract.  I pulled up on a high ridge top in the middle of a clearcut.  When I opened my truck door, the wind took it from my hand and laid it against the front fender of the truck.  The wind was blowing about 75 miles per hour.  I could see 5 separate smokes from my vantage point.  There was one coming towards me that was crowning through a mature shortleaf pine stand.  It was started by a downed power line about 1.5 miles west of the tract.  There is fire in the clearcut.  We had burned it 6 weeks prior and there were still hot embers in a bone pile.  The duff layer had dried out and it was burning back across the black.  The crown fire burned into an area that I had burned previously and put it back on the ground.  One of my contractors had a dozer on site, so we were mobilized in a matter of minutes.  We were able to cut it off there.  When the county fire plow showed up, I told him that I had this one covered.  Go ahead to another one of the seven burning in the county at the time.  I worked through the night with my contractor.  My supervisor showed up the next morning and was a bit perplexed when I wanted to burn out some areas in the clearcut that didn't burn the first time.  "You've been chasing fire all night and now you want to light more?"  You can't do anything with a pyro. 

The ironic part of this story.....In the fall prior to this fire event, I got a call from one of the members of the County Board of Supervisors.  He had heard that one of his counterparts wanted to institute a burning ban for the county due to dry weather.  He knew that I still had a significant amount of prescribed burning to do.  I had been setting on it due to the dry conditions.  He asked me to attend the board meeting that night.  You must sign up ahead of the meeting to speak.  I got a copy of the agenda and there was nothing on it concerning a burning ban, but I decided to hang around anyway.  At the beginning of the meeting, the Supervisor in question asked to amend the agenda to include her ban motion.  Following that, I asked to be allowed to speak as well.  She presented her motion and had the VDOF County Forest Warden to support her plan.  The Virginia Department of Forestry is very proud of their record on wildfire prevention, and tend to be opposed to most open burning.  I had a presentation prepared and spoke before the board.  I asked for an exemption for "Certified Prescribed Burn Managers".  I explained that days were getting shorter and humidity was increasing.  The chance for a significant escape was minimal and we had the resources on site to deal with any issues.  The exemption passed on a 6-1 vote.  I was able to finish my burning.  One of the stands I burned was along the perimeter of my tract.  It was a 1.5 mile long narrow strip.  It put that head fire back on the ground so we could contain it.  Had I not burned that area previously,  we would have had fire in a 5 year old plantation along that strip.  We would not have stopped it.  At a minimum, I would have lost the entire 5000 acre tract.  The Town of Keysville would have been in jeopardy as well.  I saw the County Administrator shortly after the fire event and told him what happened.  He said going forward to tell him what to do.  He didn't know about that sort of thing.  All in all, it worked out.

Wud      

[Sauna freak]

I have to post one about my actual wildland firefighter days when I got paid to play with fire.  I call it the experimental prairie bomb.

In 1999, the WI DNR was doing extensive spring burning in the Buena Vista WMA to improve prairie habitat for chickens I guess.  It's a peatland, but in spring the ground is saturated enough to prevent fire peating in.  We had done most of our burns, and were saving one for bad fire conditions.  It was a 160 acre square of reed canary, various grasses, steeplebush and some small coppices of aspen suckers as well as the larger trees of around 8" that had been mechanically felled a couple years prior.

Weather was extremely dry with RH projected below 20% by noon but almost zero wind.  The only thing that made the burn viable was the fact it was surrounded by at minimum 1/2 mile of freshly cultivated farmland.  No control line needed.

The wildlife manager who was in charge of the burning program on the WMA (he was also an accomplished wildland firefighter, having worked in the field and run IC on several large incidents) decided to do a perimeter ignition to see what would happen. With zero wind and a 25000ft cap, he expected it to be epic...it was. This was accomplished by 4 ATVs with drip torches, each lighting a side simultaneously.  As the flame fronts began converging and a decent column began to develop, the zero wind picked up to 10-15 into the fire from all directions.  After a minute or so, the column blew through the cap, and that wind went to in excess of 40 mph.  The flame fronts became indistinguishable, and the flame/smoke developed into a single vortex.  Flame heights were in excess of 200' spiraling up the column and carrying 8" aspen sticks with them.  The column reached 50000 feet and got the attention of the FAA and the USAF at fort McCoy.  High altitude air traffic was re-routed.  We got yelled at.  It looked like a nuclear strike had occurred in central WI.  We created several spot fires up to a mile away where mostly cooled cinders (they went high enough in the column to air cool...mostly) were raining down.  Total burn time from when the flame fronts started a decent column until the active fire laid down into hot spots and smolders was under 5 minutes.  It was truly epic, and I will never forget the awesome power of nature I witnessed that day.

Edit to add.  Found my notes, and Fort McCoy dopplar clocked the updraft velocity in excess of 300mph between 1000 and 5000 feet altitude!  We basically created an F4 fire tornado for a few minutes.

[Southside]

The day Wudman talks about in 2008 there was a fire here on our farm. Utility line started it, only burned 4 or 5 acres of mature pine, but came within 200' of the house. 

I harvested most of that timber around 5 years later, left a few and you can still see the char marks today. 

[Ed]

Many moons ago, a springtime brush fire down the road caught the muck on fire. There was a hole about 10' in diameter that smoldered for several months.
When it finally went out, the county filled it in with roadside ditch cleanings.

Lesson learned as our property has 20 acres of muck ground on it.

Ed

[farmfromkansas]

I pile up brush on the farm in the pastures.  The only safe time to burn it is after we get snowfall.  Well i had several piles in different places in the pasture, and we got an ice storm and then about 8" of snow.  So the next day I called in my fires, took bales of wheat straw and attempted to get fires started.  Went from one pile to the next all day long, and would pitch straw on the piles, light and go on to the next pile.  Not one pile would get to burning.  Finally gave up about dark and went home, and was so tired went to bed early.  Anyway, one of the piles finally took off, and a light could be seen up in the pasture.  Had an old lady neighbor with onset of dimentia, and she called 911.  Got a call waking me up from the sheriff's office telling me to go put the fire out.  I was a little disgusted.  When you have 8" of snow, there is not a chance of a fire getting out of control.

[Sauna freak]

Arson is only if you set the fire on purpose with the intention of burning something down or up in the case of wildland.  What he did is more like negligence and would still be responsible, but not arson.  It's a question of premeditation.  

Actually, per minnesota statute, destruction of property or wildland due to negligence or illegal burning IS considered 4th degree arson regardless of intent.  There is a separate statute pertaining specifically to wildlands, and incurs mostly civil penalties.