Firestarter

Fire Starter

11.9.2021

This summer was hot.  Miserably hot.  We were in the middle of raging wildfires, insanely high temperatures, low water reserves, and a shortage of above-ground pools at Walmart.  It was a perfect storm for a field fire.  And yet, I still thought that cutting drier than normal grain hay on a drier than normal Hartstrand field would be a good idea.  Spoiler alert: it wasn't.

To be fair (use your Letterkenny voice when you read that), A) this was the earliest I could even get to that field, B) it had a decent rain hit it 2 days prior, and C) I started cutting in the morning so it wouldn't be too hot or dry.  And mostly, things went well.

Until they didn't.  I'd cut all morning and had just one more pass to make before I was finished, but as I turned the swather around to make my final pass, I saw smoke.  Oh shit.  From that moment on, I went full Keystone Cops.  I was near Grant's house, so I spun the swather back around and raced into his driveway.  I started grabbing anything I could get my hands on that would put out a fire.  As I ran back and forth with shovels, coolers full of water, and rakes, I didn't notice that I had passed, several times, a literal pile of fire extinguishers.  I raced back out to the field on a 4-wheeler I saw the fire had expanded to the size of, say, the RV I'd soon be living in if I burned down all the homes on Hartstrand.  I dumped the cooler on the flames and extinguished 1/10th of the flames.  A young passerby in flip-flops stopped to help and tried stomping out the flames.  Bad idea.  

That's when I grabbed the fire extinguisher.  Those things are appropriately named.  Honestly, I don't think I'd ever used one before, but I've seen movies and I knew it was a lot like using a grenade (which I also have never used before).  And it worked.  I got about 90% of the fire out and the rest I smothered with my giant, broken grain shovel.  I finally breathed.

My brothers showed up with a water truck and I doused the area.  Neighbors showed up.  CalFire showed up.  I found the rock that the swather blades nicked and likely sparked the fire, so I saved it for my baby book.  I've been cutting hay for a lot of years and this was my first fire.  My dad, who also cut hay for a lot of years, started only one, but it was a big one.  Boray planes were deployed.  This one sufficiently spooked me.  I'm cutting now in a swather/fire truck.  I have shovels, fire extinguishers, piss-pumps, fire shelters, a helmet, and flashing lights.  It might be overkill, but if it happens again, I'll be ready.

Of course, I didn't have time to take a picture. But here's a cool one of Regina the day the smoke rolled in..