How disasters come to happen

I’ve always heard that big disasters (the man-made kind, that is) are caused by a series of small mistakes, rather than a big bone-head one.  I’m a believer.  Let me explain.

Tuesday, Liz was hosting a little book-club group at our house.  The fireplace had some ashes in it and she decided it would be nice to have a cheery fire and that would also make it so she didn’t have to clean up the ashes.  Who could argue with logic like that?  I was assigned to provide the wood.  I almost always have some scrap wood laying around, but this time I didn’t have much.  However, I had some logs of osage orange (aka Bois de Arc) I am hoping to turn into beautiful bowls some day, and that some day hadn’t come up in a long time.  So I brought in an 8” log and put it on the fire with enough small stuff to keep it crackling merrily.  The party/book club was a roaring success.  That night I couldn’t sleep and came downstairs to find the place full of smoke.  Osage orange is dense wood and burning it is kind of like burning iron.  It takes a long time.  But through the night that log had burned and burned until the front half of it burned away and the log rolled forward, coming to rest against the screen at the front of the fireplace.  From that position, the smoke didn’t go up the chimney, it went out into the house.  I set it back on the grate and turned on the gas starter to maintain a flow of air up the chimney and went back to bed.  Next morning, Liz wanted to turn off the gas, and I wanted to keep the smoke out of the house (even though it was too late), so we decided the log needed to go outside.  I carried it outside and put it on some bricks in the back yard, then went to work.  Along in the afternoon, I was cutting some molding pieces to frame a doorway, working outside in a fairly brisk wind, but of a very pleasant temperature.  My phone rang and it was Liz’s mother asking me if I was home.  I told her no, I was at work, and she said, “Well, your little shed is on fire.”  That set me back.  I asked her if it was actual smoke and flames fire and she said yes and should she call the fire department.  YES!!!  I mean, “Yes, please.  Right away would be nice.  Do it NOW!”  So the fire department came and tore down my shed and put out the fire.  It seems that some time during the day a piece of the log, fanned by the wind, fell off the bricks and landed in the grass.  Who knew that flat lawn provided enough fuel to sustain a flame?  It did, though.  The grass burned along the edge of the lawn for 8-10 feet just beyond the porch, turned 90 degrees and burned about 15 feet along the edge of some bushes and ignited two paper bags of leaves Liz had raked up a few days before.  The two bags of leaves burned for a while and started the corner of my plastic storage shed on fire.  Meanwhile, the lawn burned in the other direction, spreading out generally and ignited a section of plastic construction fencing I had abandoned on the back lawn temporarily (honest, it was just a project that had to be halted by darkness).  The thin plastic mesh burned amazingly well, including going right over the concrete edging into a bunch of leaf litter under a weeping willow, which was also burning merrily when the fire department arrived.  Amazingly, right next to the fencing was a Harbor Freight 12 ga. extension cord which was not harmed in the slightest by the fire, even though the grass burned all around it on its way to the fencing stuff.  But I digress.  When the fire department (those blessed, intrepid souls) arrived, all started to go well again.  They pulled the front side of my shed down and put out the fire just before it ignited the 2 7-gallon plastic containers of gasoline I keep for the emergency generator.  One of the containers had actually begun to shrink down as the plastic softened – the thing plastic containers do just before they burst into flames.  That would have been bad, but our heroes saved us from that one.  They also put out the fire under the spreading weeping willow tree and they put out the osage orange log.  I have more thanks to offer than those stout-hearted men will ever hear.  My mother-in-law is safe and well on her way to ensuring I never forget a moment’s carelessness and haste.  The shed will be re-built.  The lawn and bushes will grow back.  The bricks are fine, though darkened.

My face is red, but I still have a pillow to rest it on, so all in all, I have no complaints.  But if your spouse ever hosts a little group of book enthusiasts and suggests a cheery fire……