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Yesterday a man decided to work on one of his generators. His 12v batteries for his solar system were in the same outbuilding. There were also several open containers of gasoline. There was also a gasoline leak of undetermined duration. The outbuilding was a wood framed, wood siding, wood floor, asphalt shingle roof building. It looked like it had been there for several years, so the wood was very dry. This residence is located well off the beaten path, several miles from any paved road, with little to no winter maintenance.
Anyways.... I'm still not sure what he did, I only know what happened. Something sparked! Remember the gasoline leak? Yep. That gasoline ignited, which I think surprised the man, to say the least. The wife said she heard a loud "KA_BOOM!!!". She looked outside, only to see her husband flopping around in the snow. Not only was his solar generator shed gone and on fire.... her husband (aka - the generator dude) was on fire as well.. She said he was really putting off some good flames. The wife dialed 911.
Now.... remember the weather I've been writing about? The snow, everyday? Well it seems these folks were void of a snow plow. Their drive-way is about 300' on a steep downhill grade, and was not plowed. The drive-way did not have a place to turn around. We could only get one 4x4 engine into this fire.
As I approached the house, on foot, the generator dude was walking out to meet me. He had been shrink wrapped in his nylon clothing. He had very little hair left. It was snowing very hard. There was no way to get a helicopter to this man, and he needed to visit a burn center, sometime in the near future. Just then a man.... a looky-loo.... drove over the hill on a 4x4 quad-runner. He had heard about the fire on his handy scanner. He thought he would go take a look.... see what he could see. I smiled and thought....Perfect. I told the quad runner dude to drive the generator dude down the hill to meet an ambulance. The quad runner dude lost all the color in his face and said, "That's a long ways!" I told him to drive there....or lose his quad. He complied. The last I saw of the generator dude? He was on the back of a 4x4 quad-runner, hanging on for dear life, snow and slush flying, the quad-runner dude driving....TOP SPEED! The quad runner dude was not going to let the generator dude die on the back of his quad runner.....not today. All 450cc of quad runner engine were pegged.....wide open! I just shook my head, and laughed.
Now back to the fire. Remember the gasoline leak? Well, the gasoline was still burning, as were all those 12v batteries. The flames had already destroyed the collapsed building, there was very little wood left to burn. The fire seemed to be coming from the soil itself. That gasoline had been leaking for a long time. Remember the snow... and the one engine? This engine had only 350 gallons of water. The eager ambition of the young engine crew consumed those 350 gallons very fast.
Remember the whole solar thing? This residence had no power to operate the water well. So, I thought lets hook our own generator to water well. I asked the generator dudes wife where the water well was. Her reply? "Somewhere in that shed". Of course it is.
Now all we could do is watch the dirt burn. So burn it did. For about another hour we watched the fire slowly dwindle. We had snow, shovels and rakes, and other implements of destruction. We had an abundance of snow, so we used the shovels to shovel snow onto the batteries. We stirred the batteries into a slurry of plastic, lead, and snow. When the gasoline was completely burned, we packed up our implements of destruction and went home.
It was still snowing.
ps. Toaka says..... ( singing!)
"On the second day of Christmas, my daddy gave to me....Two Rawhide chews...and a Pig Ear for me, and just me!"
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