Sunday Morning Fire

Above: Saturna volunteer firefighters dealing with a stubborn fire on a Sunday morning

We have a burn pile near my house. It's in a clearing, away from the trees, near a pond. When they clean their yards and driveways, my neighbours (and us) take the accumulated brush and branches to this burn pile. We can pile up quite a bit of stuff to burn over a season...

Four weeks ago, we burned the accumulated greenery and then extinguished the fire. Or so we thought...

Above: Hot, sweaty work... and they are volunteers

Early last Sunday morning (4 weeks after the burn, remember...), someone caught a whiff of smoke and went to investigate. And was horrified to see 4-foot flames creeping toward the tree line! So he alerted neighbours, called 911 and returned to the site, to try to control the fire before the first responders got there.

I helped with the phoning around to neighbours, to warn them. By the time I got to the site, everything was under control, pond water was pumped onto the flames and the Saturna Volunteer Firefighters were demonstrating their savoir-faire.

Lesson learned: fire is sneaky. It may look like you have put out the fire, but it is still hot underneath and can reignite several weeks later...

Fire season is upon us.