Blast aka Bill Gray

pyromania

n : an uncontrollable desire to set fire to things

Let that be a lesson to you! One small match can light a bloody big fire and when I say big, I mean BIG.

It all started innocuously enough. It was 9am this morning. Cool day but the sun was shining and no wind. Perfect for burning off a bit of a pile of branches, bark and other vegetation that had accumulated around the place and dumped in a pile ready to be burnt.

Light one match and whooshka, instantaneous combustion. Easy!

Of course, as soon as the fire had started, the wind came up and within seconds I had spot fires around the perimeter of the original. Bashing them with a shovel worked wonders (hey, I've watched firefighters in action... well, they were on TV) I even had a hose ready.

That wind just keep building and didn't the fire love that! My pile seemed huge as the flames lept some fifteen feet into the air, hell, it was even scorching the tree branches above and around the fire.

Hell was right, its supposed to be hot there isn't it?

I had two piles of vegetation up the gully a short distance and the flames were now jumping half that distance and setting the grass on fire. This was getting serious. Thankfully, the hose had some pressure, if I could just maintain the flow on the grass fire, I would be fine.

As you can guess, the wind decided that this was fun, lets see the little bloke with the hose deal with two, no, make that three grass fires. Haha, this was fun... I seriously thought of giving it away and letting the fire department deal with it. I was running around like a chook with it's head cut off. Slowly though the main fire subsided as it had devowed all of its fuel. This gave me some time to deal with the grass.

Then it was over, back in total control.
Will attack the next pile this weekend
... now that I am an expert!