Backyard Bamboo Blaze
Sorry, I couldn’t resist the alliteration on this one. Last night while we were eating dinner there was a flash of red that seemed kind of odd. At first we thought it was just a firework (we live on a Native American Reservation and fireworks are legal year round, so it being near the 4th doesn’t have much to do with it.) Then we heard what we thought were firecrackers, a lot of firecrackers. An incredibly long string of firecrackers.
It wasn’t firecrackers, it was a fire crackling.
We have a wall ‘o bamboo in our backyard and a decent sized section of it was flaming. We don’t have a picture of it as I was busy putting it out while my wife called 911, but here’s an example of about how big it was.
And here’s some of the aftermath.
It’s hard to tell, but the fire was also on our neighbor’s side of the fence and there’s a big leaf maple tree back there that was starting to catch fire too. This all happened in about five minutes so it very easily could have lit the whole backyard. But I sprung into action with the garden hose and just blanketed the area with water and put the fire out.
Then it started again.
Like those trick birthday candles the bamboo had stored the heat and re-lit. So I sprayed the area again and again while it re-lit two more times. Even when the fire dept. arrived, they had this cool device that could monitor heat and there were still little hot spots about a third of the way up the bamboo shafts and they had to spray for awhile until things were okay.
The moral of the story? If you think you hear firecrackers check your bamboo.
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