Good or Bad: You Decide

An unpleasant life experience…

It’s not likely good news when your doorbell is rung at 2 in the morning.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Two days ago our lawn crew came to Spring Clean our yard of pine needles, pine cones, etc. There was a substantial pile of debris that they piled on our concrete basketball patio.

I have carefully burned similar debris over 60 times in the last 15 years. I wait for a calm day when the wind is less than 5 MPH and blowing in the right direction. The fire is kept low and always 20+ feet from anything flammable. I keep a hose on hand in case anything unexpected happens. It hasn’t in fifteen years.

FYI, when I was younger and still living at my family home, the house caught fire in the middle of the night (due to a TV malfunction), and was totally destroyed. No one got hurt, but we lost almost everything. As such I’m hyper-sensitive to fires.

Yesterday, was a nice calm day that met all the criteria, so I burned the debris. Before I went to bed I did a final check: the wind was still low, blowing in the right direction, and nothing but some ashes remained. There was no smoke or noticeable embers.

However, about two hours later, the wind suddenly reversed direction, and started blowing quite hard! I didn’t realize this as I was asleep.

So the doorbell rang at 2 AM last night (3-19-24). I woke up from a deep sleep and went to the front door. A thought crossed my mind: should I even open the door to some unknown stranger at this time of night? I did anyway.

A man stood there and shouted: there is a large fire next to your house! I’ve already called the fire department. I said OK, TY — there’s a connected hose next to the house.

I got my outdoor clothes on. Between our home and the next-door neighbor’s there are several trees, and a variety of wild plants. Here is a daytime pix, from the street.

The building near the water is a 3/4 scale play house, about 50 feet from the fence. The fire was coming away from that direction.

Anyway, I didn’t have time to take a pix so this is a stock photo that looks somewhat like what I saw when I went outside in the pitch dark (our situation was worse).

I then became aware that the wind was blowing a LOT — like 40 MPH! Hundreds of embers were flying with the wind. The 20-foot buffer had been breached, as embers were flying 30 feet or more…

My initial assessment concluded that (due to the wind direction) our house was not threatened, but the next-door neighbor’s was. I took the hose and started spraying — which did make a difference. I knew then we had a chance of being successful here.

The other guy went to see if the next-door house was catching fire, as fires were flaring up on their property. Fortunately, their driveway acted as a fire break, and the house hadn’t caught fire yet. He looked for a hose on their property, and found one — but their exterior faucet had been shut off. No one was home there.

He brought the hose he found there, connected it to mine, and worked on the fire from the neighbor’s direction. We have a 50-gallon rain barrel that was full (on the far side of our house), so I started filling up some two-gallon buckets, carrying them back, and dumping them on the worst spots. Many times.

In the meantime, several fire department trucks had arrived. By that time, the two of us had succeeded in reducing the fires. The firemen took over, using our hose, and finished the job. They never had to get out their main hose.

It seemed longer, but from when the doorbell rang, it took about an hour to extinguish the fire. The firemen then asked me if I could take it from there, and I said yes, I would keep an eye on things, as the wind was still blowing strongly. Then they left.

The person who rang our bell then told me that he had to go. I said I wanted to give him a donation ($100) for his help. He declined. I insisted, he refused — and then he simply disappeared into the dark night. I have no idea who he is…

We live on a short, dead-end street. This guy was not a neighbor, as I know them all. Who would be going down a short dead-end street at 2 AM? All I know is that things would have been MUCH worse if he hadn’t been going by, and stopped to help.

There are several takeaways, like no matter what the wind situation is, I’ll drown the ashes before going to bed. (BTW, I didn’t as it was never a problem in the prior 60± times, and by letting the ashed continue to cook, the next morning about half of the remaining ashes were gone.)

Another is that despite the very threatening situation, the only loss we had was to several parts of our wood fence that encircles the yard. Here is a sample pix, of just one section, from this morning.

There is a substantial amount of ground cover that is blackened, but with Spring here, in a month or so probably none if it will be noticed.

Of course I lost a good night sleep, and one eye feels scratchy — probably from my being immersed in the smoke for too long. Hopefully it is temporary.

What’s the Big Picture takeaway? On the one hand, such a fire was certainly BAD news. On the other hand, this stranger just appearing (and then disappearing) was certainly GOOD news.

I’m an optimist and a half-glass-full person.

I’m a believer in God, and that He can choose to step in whenever He deems it appropriate. I choose to believe that is what happened here.

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

My Substack Commentaries for 2023 (arranged by topic)

Check out the chronological Archives of my entire Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

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