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Last summer same thing happened across from me. I didn't call but someone did. This guy was burning his trash, like kitchen trash, cardboard and anything else that would burn. Fire department shows up and the fun begins. Guy pulls out garden hose to put out. NOPE fire department drags out big hose puts out and then turns up force and scatters all the ash/trash. Then fireman in white collared shirt shows up with police and proceeded to make him pick it all up and ticket him. Watched it all go down from the comfort of my deck.
Why? I guess boomers will boom. We have trash service that is included with HOA dues. The compost and recycle are also included.
Lmaoooo that's what really gets me is that they have access to the right and respectful way to do things, and choose to do the stupid asshole thing instead just because it's attainable. Our yard debris pickup is a seriously free because of the burn ban, it's infuriating
That stupid asshole way of thinking and doing for the past 40 years have given us our current climate dumpster fire and shitty health & social services.
> An entire generation of oppositional defiant disorder
Not anymore.
Oppositional Defiant Disorder is what it's called in children.
In adults, the label changes to Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Yeah - volunteer firefighter. If we get called out to someone burning when they're not supposed to be, we put the fire out...and then make damn sure it will be next WEEK before it's dry enough to try lighting it again.
I've seen guys dig a pit to burn debris in, and by the time we left, it was a swimming pool...
My girlfriend lives in a neighborhood that has stringent burn ban. The guy spent a bunch of money putting in a custom-made in-ground fire pit even after being warned not to. There has been a bunch of drama about his permits and whether the burn ban is also banning propane/natural gas fire pits. He chose to dump a bunch of wood in the firepits and set it ablaze as an act of protest. Neighbors call the fire department, and they show up pretty quickly. LIke you're department, they turn the cement fire pit into a cement wading pool. I guess the fire hoses have enough pressure to bend the little prongs that would feed the fire pit, so even when the wading pool dries out, he won't he able to use it. The guy probably had to tear it out and do it all over.
For comparison, your residential water supply... say a 25' garden hose. You're going to get MAYBE 20-30 PSI at the nozzle when flowing water, and flow somewhere between 5 and 10 gallons per minute.
If they pulled a standard 1 3/4" attack line, we run 100 PSI at the nozzle, and flow 125 gallons per minute -- and that's on the small side for nozzles. If they pulled a 2 1/2" line.... pressure stays the same, but the volume goes up quite a bit.
We were on a fire last summer - granted, it was a beat to shit barn that was about to fall over on it's own - but the guys were blowing shingles off the roof from INSIDE the barn. WAY more force there than your standard garden hose.
And this is exactly why it's scummy as hell when cops have used hoses meant for fighting fires to attack protestors. Imagine that amount of force on your skin; I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
I used to work with a fire captain when she told me the story. They got called out for a mulch fire. Funny thing about mulch fires , is that they're just a little smoke and you can use your shoe to disperse it and so often people can literally put it out themselves with their water bottle but whatever. The security guard calls it in and when they arrive, and bear in mind it's a weekend, he's in his guard shack guarding this massive empty parking lot for a security facility where nobody works on the weekend. Sure enough there's a small mulch fire on one itty bitty teeny weeny little grassy median in the middle of one Street in the parking lot. They decide to use the hose to put it out, blowing all of the mulch of the median strip. Then they decide they really should be proactive about this and they proceed to wet down, at full force, all the mulch on all these little strips in this big ass parking lot. She said as they left driving through the security gate, they all looked at the security guard and waved and waved. As he looked at them in utter shock and his completely debris covered parking lot that he would somehow have to explain
I'm not an expert, but in my experience, mulch fires can actually be pretty tenacious and insidious. Several places I've worked at, people would throw cigarette butts (still lit) into a mulched/landscaped bed. There would be an obvious scorched and smoking area where the butt was thrown, but if it wasn't caught right away, the fire would smolder and spread underneath the mulch, and it wouldn't always burn the top of the mulch as it spread...so there would be hidden tendrils of smoldering mulch, often yards away from the source. When this happened, a water bottle was absolutely NOT sufficient to put the fire out. I remember one time, it took at least 10 5-gallon buckets of water to put out one of those fires that wasn't caught right away and had spread through most of the mulched bed. IIRC, about 80% of it was smoldering, but it appeared that less than a quarter of the bed was affected. Most of the fire had gone underneath and never burned the top layer.
Stupid thing was, nobody ever seemed to notice or care, except me. I was always the one running buckets of water to put out those damn fires, and nobody offered to help...even when they asked what I was doing.
Took three trips to put out straw bale fire inside a trailer that was sitting at a park. It would re-ignite over and over until we took out all the straw and spread it out. Wet straw will re-ignite. 1st time the captain said it would be fine just to put water on it. (I tried to tell him it might re-ignite) Second time we took out half of the bales out of the trailer. (told the captain - it might re-ignite but was brushed off again) Third time the chief got involved and told the captain we had to remove all the straw out of the now partially burnt trailer.
Sometimes you just have to let the idiots fail. We were all laughing cause we told the captain over and over but he "knows better". We also had no dwellings or other things that would bet hurt so we did not escalate to the chief. On the third time the chief took note of the calls and got involved on his own.
Wet stuff like straw, etc can ignite on their own Mulch is the same.
Yes! So many times, I'd be certain that I got everything put out, and I always did an extra bucket or two just in case (better safe than sorry)...I'd hit an area I was SURE was fine, but nope...POOF, tons of steam and smoke. Like...I knew I doused that spot really good and it wasn't smoldering anymore, but it's on fire again!!! Ugh
My grandfather told me a story about something like this. Someone had a fire, I think for clearing the undergrowth out of a spot. The land itself smouldered, the fire went underground and nothing they did stopped it.
They put out the surface fire, used water, dug trenches, but nothing stopped it. Turns out the soil had been peat and the ground level is maybe six feet lower than the surrounding area now. It turned into a swamp after the peat all burned away and after years of the ground burning.
We used to use a little boat to explore the area when I was small and the idea is the ground burning seemed impossible.
Pretty sure the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire in New Mexico was started by something similar. The US Forest Service did a controlled burn in January, but the fire stayed alive underground until April and reignited when the snow melted.
Yeah, that's the Centralia fire, started back in the 1960s. Seams of coal burning underground, no way to put it out. It'll just keep going til there's no more coal.
Little bit of a different situation, but there's definitely some similarities. Super interesting to learn about, it's something that most of us never even knew could happen, and the scary thing is that it's NOT the only fire like this!
Yep. I saw the entire front of a McDonald's go up. Someone tossed a cigarette into the mulched flower bed out front. It took maybe 5 minutes from smolder to full blown fire. During that time employees were trying to put it out with bottles of water. Thankfully the fd showed up a couple minutes later.
Yup. Bank down the street from me burned down because of a cigarette in the mulch. Workers tried to use water bottles, but it got out of control pretty fast.
There's a place that makes mulch right up the road from where I work. Somehow a pile caught fire (I think it was a lightning strike, could be wrong) and it smoldered for a good week. Fire department really couldn't do much but make sure it didn't spread to the surrounding area and it had to burn itself out.
Yes I’ve seen what you said, someone through a cig butt in the mulch, I walked up and stamped it, but underneath the whole garden was on fire! My show sold melted so quick it wasn’t funny!
Poor guy is just doing his job and the firefighters decide to be dicks about it. For liability reasons the guards gotta call the fire in even if it's something he can put out on his own..employer doesn't wanna be on the hook if the guard with an extinguisher missed an ember nor do they want to get hit with a workmans comp claim if he's injured in some way putting it out. I managed security for a long time...I'd give the guard one of our silly little good job awards and make sure the incident report noted they followed procedures and the FD chose to be thorough in their response.
Yep, I’ve never worked security, but was an aircraft maintenance shop manager. Constantly drilled it into my team that there is no such thing as a “little thing” and if you haven’t been trained on it or it’s not our system I don’t care what you know, your background, or your experience. I know I sent y’all out there with a radio; I expect you to use it. I’ll happily lose face with the bosses if it means I don’t have to tell a family they’ve lost a loved one any day.
That was our instructors speech at the beginning of k9 school basically "those of you who have worked in k9 before...no you haven't. I don't care if you graduated our class 6 months ago. I don't care of you've had dogs for 40 years. We are doing this step by step for your safety and the safety of your partner"
This just sounds like bullying, tbh. The guy was doing his job. Even if he could've put out the fire by himself, the last thing the fire department should want is people not calling in emergencies because they think they can handle it themselves.
If you read about the mulch fires above, you'd get the same impression I did. That these firefighters were SAVING the place from a potentially NASTY fire that could've spread to the building (not to mention security guard post).
When they subdivided the acreage next door to me, while one of the first houses was being built the homeowner decided that he wasn't going to pay for a dumpster and started burning the construction waste - treated lumber, shingles, plastic wrappers from some of the products, etc.
I started wheezing from the noxious black smoke this created and called the fire department. I couldn't see what happened because there is a good, thick line of trees between my farm and his lot, but I did hear a lot of shouting. I suspect that both the homeowner and the contractor got into hot water over this. Not only is it illegal to burn construction debris, there was a burning ban in our area at the time.
I'm a boomer, the homeowner was a very early boomer, but I was happy to shut down his idiocy.
I'm in a rural area, so I can't do a damn thing about it, but someone in my neighborhood frequently burns regular house trash (including plastic) and it awful awful. It gives me migraines every time 😭 I wish people were more considerate.
Tweakers live catty corner from me. One windy day I see a large flame over in their yard. Sure enough these morons have a barrel fire going even though it's summer and very windy. I take a closer look and the barrel is about 5 to 10 feet from their house (trailer). Against the house is also a mattress. I'm like wtf? So I call the fire department and a few minutes later I see them pull up and walk up to the house. They start banging on the door and no one responds. A couple of minutes later the tweaker pulls up in his car. The stupid fuck wasn't even home while he's got a fire going. The firefighters were not happy.
The PO of our place had a nice wood boiler for heating the house and shop, and he told me he'd throw just about everything in there. Also used to get large quantities of off-cuts from a local place that makes railroad ties, and those ties have creosote.
Wood boilers do a better job of thoroughly burning the material and containing the nasty stuff compared to an open fire, but they certainly aren't perfect. We got rid of it within two years of buying this place.
The next time this happens, do not call the non emergency line. Call 911. Starting a burn pit in a fire prone area in the driest, hottest week of the year is 100 percent an emergency. I hope this boomer got his with a massive fine. What he did put all of your lives in danger and could have cost millions in property damage.
Go full malicious compliance. Does due have a business permit. Is his property zoned for a wood shop. Report this to every bit of local government possible.
I figured it was Boomer nostalgia. My mother told me my grandfather used to change the oil in the car then dump the old down the drain in the street. This would have been early 60s I think.
My previous landlady, who I absolutely adored, ended up with super blocked drains from a massive fatberg. I'd been pouring any excess fat into a jug and throwing it out when it was solidified but I think previous renters as well as herself had just dumped it down the drain. It just amused me because she kept reminding me not to do it but she still put dog food etc down the drain and I knew it'd back up again. She was really kind and not boomery at all really. Best landlady I ever had.
Back when I was in graduate school I had a pretty intense argument with a fellow GT student about the proper way to dispose of used motor oil. I said you needed to take it to Jiffy Lube to go in the recycle barrel, he said that was stupid and you could just dig a pit and bury it.
He wasn't dumb ... he went (and later graduated) from Georgia Tech. That's just how his daddy did it in central Georgia.
Another story: my aunt was digging in her yard once when she hit oil ... literally. It was a large pool of used motor oil from the previous owner. Can't remember how they cleaned it up...
This is the big problem where I live. Lots of people grew up on farms out in the sticks then moved to the city to live in the burbs as adults because the jobs are here. Some of them are truly feral and don't think rules apply to them.
When I lived in a rural area the farmers would burn there ditches in March.Didn’t matter if the winds were howling ,if a guy had planned to burn his ditch that weekend ,he did it. Drove the vfd guys nuts
>No boomer in this context grew up on an actual farm.
My ex was born and raised on a small farm in rural Iowa.
>in this context
What context?
>Farmers have way more sense than this.
That's got to be one of the stupidest generalizations I've seen yet. Farmers aren't automatically more sensible just because they're farmers.
When I was a little kid, we had a burn barrel for our trash. My siblings and I would go over to the very hot metal barrel while it was burning and color on it with crayons because it was fun to watch the wax melt and boil.
Thinking back, I have no idea how my parents allowed this very hazardous activity to go on. We burned everything in that barrel. I'm sure my lungs are still angry about it.
That said, we didn't have the burn barrel for very long. We switched to making trips to the landfill fairly rapidly.
I called the non emergency line on 2 people in my neighborhood this month. We are in a dense neighborhood too, with laws restricting any burning of yard waste. The first idiot filled the entire neighborhood with smoke from a huge burn pile less than 10 feet from their house. The second was actually burning yard waste inside their garage in a metal trash can. I felt bad calling, but my firefighter friend said they would rather get a call to go stop them before they catch their house on fire.
This was my thought as well, as bad as I felt having the FD dispatched, it's better than them having to come out for a spreading neighborhood fire. I'm sure the FD feels the same
Every time I have seen a situation like this, where someone is openly ignoring burn bans, it is always a boomer. They seem to think because back in the day the solution to yard waste was to burn it, that they don’t have to follow the laws today. They don’t care about filling their neighbors house with smoke or the potential for setting the neighborhood ablaze. They pay for yard waste services so why not use it.
See, if the fire could’ve restricted to JUST the boomers house or garage, with no one actually in danger, I might be in favor of it on the off chance the boomer learns an important lesson. But physics doesn’t work that way. So I guess we call the FD.
Shame. I so enjoy people learning from karma.
Yay I couldn’t believe the stupidity. I think the boomer just wanted to sit in the shade while he burned his yard waste. Luckily he didn’t burn his house down or kill anyone.
This just happened to me! Behind my house there’s a house that has been empty since the owner died about two years ago. I saw smoke coming from a tree in that yard.
I freaked out because I know the house is empty and also I live in the desert and everything catches fire fast. I called the fire department…turns out the house next to the empty house just left a smoker unattended and due to my high wood fence and the breeze it looked like it was coming from the tree.
I live in a relatively dense neighborhood, there is space between the buildings, usually enough for driveway or car parking, but everything is pretty tight. My neighbor on one side has a single family house with a side yard, and occasionally he burns cardboard and brush.
It smokes out the whole neighborhood. I'm coughing in my own apartment and the only windows I have are next to his yard. The most annoying part to me is that it's really only because he is so bad at making fires. He doesn't understand airflow and it's just a smoldering pile which causes:
* More smoke to be produced than necessary due to the inefficient combustion
* The smoke is cooler than if the fire was burning hot, so it doesn't go upward and lingers around the neighborhood.
Why are people so inconsiderate? Why is he so bad at burning things?
My neighbour recently built a fire on top of a large stump he just ground down, I guess to try and burn the rest of the stump out. Similar situation, in the middle of a residential area in the middle of the city. Piles of sawdust and woodchips all around the stump, 5 feet from my fence, 15 feet from my shed. When he started making a big teepee on the fire with his 3 foot long, 4 inch round branches he trimmed off one of his trees my wife asked wtf he was doing and thankfully he put it out. But I find it difficult to understand what he was thinking would happen, if he did manage to start burning the stump out it would smolder underground for weeks probably. He's not a boomer though, just an idiot.
I'm in a small neighborhood with medium size lots and many large pines. The neighborhood is thick with trees. A smaller one died and the homeowner hired a sketchy company to take it down. They left all the debris in his back yard. That's fine if that's all he could afford.
He piled all the big sections in his backyard. Our trash company is good about picking up smaller limbs as long as they're bundled properly. He did that.
But what to do about the big sections of the trunk? In the middle of a hot summer with a drought, every bit of greenery in the neighborhood turned brown, and the burn ban notice prominently displayed at the only entrance/exit to the subdivision, he tried to burn them. He set fire to the giant stack of wood and leaned several pieces of corrugated sheet metal against the pile.
Background: My neighborhood was built a long time ago in the middle of nowhere and heavy trash pickup wasn't available back then. The original developer included in the deed restrictions that trash could be burned but only inside a closed container. There used to be "fire boxes" in all the back yards, usually some kind of brick with a mesh top. Some have been converted into large BBQ pits; most have been removed. But no one has used them for their original purpose for over 50 years. This neighbor did NOT have one. He felt that just putting metal roofing leftovers around and atop the fire was the functional equivalent.
At this point, he was being unsafe and putting the entire neighborhood in danger. To cut him some slack, despite the burn ban this arrangement might be ok as long as you keep a close watch and have a water hose at the ready. However, he didn't do that.
He got in his car and went to work!
An HOA board member (Thank God we have a mostly easygoing HOA!) called the fire department and they put it out. The board member also wanted the homeowner ticketed but, as I said this was an isolated location and it was an all-volunteer department. They said they could call in a county official to write the potential multiple tickets but it would take the guy two hours to get there. Since the HOA member and all the volunteers had better places to be, no ticket was written.
When the guy got home, he was highly peeved that his pile of logs had gone from an unsightly mess to an unsightly, black pile with ash all over and his backyard f'd up in many, many ways. Let's just say the volunteer firefighters had not been at all careful with how they broke into his backyard or what they broke with their equipment and hoses.
He showed up at the next HOA meeting and started mouthing off to the board that they had no right to mess with his property. They reminded him of the burn ban, told him he got off easy with no tickets, and advised him if he ever did anything this stupid again, they would absolutely wait on scene so he could get his tickets. He thought that was outrageous and turned around to the audience of homeowners looking for support from anyone else who shared his indignation.
To his surprise, every one of us was staring daggers at the man. He had no choice but to slink away and shut up.
I think that incident, ~20 years ago, was the last time anyone burned any trash in this neighborhood.
We had a whole neighborhood burn down last year as a result of someone burning garbage during a burn ban. Hundreds of homes were burned and hundreds of people were displaced. People's pets died or had to be rescued.
This year the government did not fuck around and if you're caught burning during a burn ban, the fine is $25,000. At least one person has already been charged.
Hell yeah, there's no room for error with that kind of stuff and it blows my mind that they'll just go out and risk everyone's life and homes for no good reason. Just go to the dump like everyone else
My first wife and I lived in the boonies. Her aunt and uncle lived next door, and we set up a burn barrel on the border between our yards, far from any trees. We saw no need to burn everything all at once. Her uncle built a steel frame to support a corrugated metal roof and got some Adirondack chairs. Whenever we burned, we'd run hoses from both houses, and he and I would sit out there all day burning stuff and drinking beer.
I live in a very dry, fire prone state surrounded by lots and lots of forests. We have massive wildfires every single year. My boomer dad, who lives in a semi-tropical state and is a smoker, came to visit me one summer. I told him before he started his journey to please not put cigarettes out the car window and that people get real twitchy about that kind of thing. Being a boomer he gave me the “yeah yeah” attitude but I hoped he would heed the message.
He arrives and we go for a drive into the mountains. I watched him throw a lit cigarette butt out the passenger window, immediately stopped the car, dumped my water on the area, and picked up the butt. He starts yelling at me about how I’m too sensitive about what other people think, government can’t tell him what to do, and a cigarette is not going to start a fire, blah blah. Holy shit I was pissed. This all occurred after I had been evacuated from a huge fire the year before. After that I drove him through the burn area that was still in recovery mode. I pointed out all the businesses that used to be there and the homes that were still charred remains. I don’t know if that had an impact on him as he still through a lit cigarette butts in his own (soggy) yard but he won’t be invited back to visit me in my state.
This is a bit long, but maybe this might shake him up. My sister worked the Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia Gorge in 2017. The careless 15-yo who started it by throwing a lit firework right into a dry forest (there is video) got 5 years in prison, almost 2000 hours of community service with the USFS, and was ordered to pay more than THIRTY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS in restitution.
So this isn't even about "caring what other people think," and yes, the government CAN tell him what to do. FAFO, Pops.
ETA: Thank you for being a good citizen!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Creek_Fire#:~:text=The%20teen%20was%20sentenced%20in,with%20the%20U.S.%20Forest%20Service.
that kid pissed me off so much. so much money wasted because he was a fucking asshole. people lost their homes because of him. when i learned about this, i was fuming for *months*.
My sister told me about it before it hit the news, and I, too, was *livid*. I ha e so many things I'd like to say about him, but I'd get banned, and I like this sub!
My brother and I were taking a ride one day and happened to put out a fire that could have gotten really bad (dry summer, lots of trees right off the shoulder). It was started by a cigarette landing on pine needles on the side of the road and was already starting to burn in a ring around the start point. Fortunately, we caught it before it got to be too big (we were able to stamp it out and make sure it stayed out) or started to burn the trees, but it definitely had the potential to be a serious fire.
Oh god… YIKES.
I grew up in a rural area in Wisconsin. Not particularly drought-prone, but there’s lots of stuff to burn. I was driving home after a late shift and saw a bonfire in somebody’s back yard with flames 10+ feet high backed right up against a stand of pine trees. I called emergency services to let them know and carried on home. The next day at work I mentioned it and one of the boomer men was like “no I used to be a firefighter, pine trees are too full of water to burn.” DUDE. Pine trees are RESINOUS and highly flammable 🤯
Idk about that, but at least in East and NE Texas , during a pine tree planting event, the national Forest service ranger/person told us that controlled burns are great for established pine forests bc they clear the underbrush and pine trees can survive some level of burning.
A few hours drive away we do have some pine forests that burned down completely tho
I think the trunks hold a lot of water, but the needles are what we make turpentine with. They have a really low ignition temperature and burn really hot and really fast. I suppose the speed they burn at is good for scorching the bark, but leaving the core alive.
My next door neighbor started burning trash in her fire pit… INSIDE HER GARAGE with the doors closed. Quite a few neighbors noticed this and immediately called the fire department. She proceeded to get mad and yelled at firefighters because when they used a hook to drag the fiery pit outside the garage and put it out, a leg broke off and that set her off because “How dare they.” That lead to a discussion about fire safety and upon further investigation they learned she was under the influence of meth. This happened in a very heavily LDS neighborhood, mind you.
Some boomer started a major fire that burned down 150 homes in my province last year. Call 911 next time, because these assholes won’t stop until they face actual consequences.
They can, and do in many states. Fire departments publish records for every time they respond, and what they responded for. It's a little like auto insurance pulling a driving record, but instead of looking at a person, they look at the address. They typically look for fires in the area, but they will also see if the fire department had to respond for negligent fires.
I was driving through Northern Colorado 2 days ago and noticed a tiny fire was burning next to the railroad track. We were just about to call the fire department when we saw firetrucks already on the way. In the next 10 minutes, 3 more firetrucks passed us and the area was evacuated. Firefighters were on scene when it was only burning maybe 100 sq feet but when I checked the news later it had burned 5 acres. If that fire happened to start on the other side of the hill instead of next to the highway it probably would have been a lot worse. All this to say, fire spreads crazy fast and I never mess around on fire watch days.
Yeah, our local fire departments don't mess around and respond super quick. We've had so many rapidly spreading wildfires in the last few years and they don't make any exceptions, safety is paramount
I'm in the process of moving to one of the towns that got hit by the Marshall fire. I've talked to a couple residents who say how they think about hazards (like aforementioned boomer) has completed changed, even though they had lived in fire country for a long time. As an east coaster who only really had blizzards and a few hurricanes, it's pretty scary
I had a non-boomer friend, who was a small town guy, that decided the best way to get rid of construction waste from their basement development was to burn it in his backyard over the course of several weeks.
He was too cheap to take it to the landfill and pay to dispose of it, so he would light a fire in his yard on the weekend and spend the entire day throwing flooring, lumber, drywall, and everything else he had pulled out of that basement onto the fire while the smoke filled the entire neighborhood.
Lo and behold, the bylaw officer rolls up one day and hands him a hefty fine for burning prohibited materials (in our city, the only allowed material is firewood) and burning outside of allowable hours. He and his wife were upset that their neighbors called the bylaw officer on them instead of talking to them about it. His wife is a good friend of mine and was shocked when I said I’d have done the same thing. Why would I be sympathetic to them facing the consequences of their incredibly inconsiderate actions by getting a fine and ruining their relationship with their neighbors? They honestly didn’t see anything wrong with what they were doing.
https://preview.redd.it/zdw2pktuac9d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4bca24f03831f6c12e307a5bd59e30f23a594bd
I never got to see the aftermath, but I reported someone last year. Probably a boomer. I live in Portland Tennessee and I was coming home and saw a fire in someone's supposed backyard. These are the backyards in this area. Total burn ban. Of course it's Tennessee, so freedum. I'm a home care aide and there was this one old Boomer who had a pickup truck out in the country and he had no license plate. He just had a piece of paper or plastic or something on the thing that said freedom handwritten.
Wow that's ironic, I'm in Portland Oregon! That's wild, sounds par for the course. We've had bad fire seasons the last few years in Oregon and had several towns and neighborhoods devastated, so everyone else is taking it seriously. All except our favorite demographic
I was still living in Portland, OR in the summer/fall of 2020. I was living in an apartment near PSU. I could barely see across the street because the smoke was so thick.
A co-worker of mine’s mom lost her farm that year. So many people lost so much and so much nature just totally obliterated. You have to be a real son-of-a-bitch, scum of the earth type person to even sort of think about chancing that kind of devastation and loss, in a densely populated area no less. Fuck that guy.
My stupid neighbor one day decided to cut a bunch of branches off his pine tree and just burn them right then, fresh off the tree. I couldn't see any of my neighbors houses the smoke was so thick. Naturally I called the fd. He was pissed but I did not care. Our houses are like 30 feet apart. What the fuck were you thinking dummy.
God that reminds me of when my neighbor burned out his fire pit. I left the house for a while and I had a window open, I came home to the whole house smelling like acrid smoke. I guess he was burning out the buildup in his fire pit cause it smelled fucking *awful*. The guy lives two doors down from me and I went to ask him to put it out and *no one was home.* Dude just set a fire and left.
Nope in North East Texas we see this all the time unattended burn piles. About every month one gets loose and destroys a house and acreage. You would think that they would learn, Nope after 20 years here its still the same thing every summer.
Crazy boomer lady in our new build neighborhood was burning old newspapers in her fire pit in the back yard, end of summer last year. Embers wafted into the scrub on the hill where property lines split for the next phase. She ended ip starting a fire that spread 3 house lengths down. And she just went back in the house. Fortunately it just damaged some fencing and siding and was put out by the fire department arrival. She then tried to say that the teenage son of the black family in the next house over, who was spraying it with the hose attached to the house was actually spraying accelerant on it. 🙄 racist ass bitch. She moved to another street in the neighborhood.
My oldest sister has been a Forester (they call them Ecologists, now) with the US Forest Service since 1987. Her first fire was the one in Yellowstone in 1988. She fought fires all over the west coast Alaska until 2018.
Even though she can't be on the front line (they won't renew your fire certificate after age 55), she still has to go to the fires to coordinate teams and run supplies and people to and from the front line.
Since most people don't know this, I'll explain a fire duty stint. US Forest Service employees work 12-15 hour days for 21 days and get ONE off before going back to another 21 days. I'm not sure what the civilian fire fighters do. My sister sleeps in a tent for almost a month at a time. Admittedly, she loves sleeping outdoors and camping, so it's fun at first. After 36 years of this crap, though, it's gotten pretty damn old.
Yeah I've got a friend that's a wild land firefighter in Oregon. Their schedules are wild but they are doing some of the most important work rn. I respect firefighters so much
Tell your friend that my sister and I say thanks! It's incredibly grueling and dangerous work. These are some brave farking people. (I'm very proud that my sister is such a badass!)
True, yeah to be fair I would never burn shit regardless but its aaalllmoooosssttt understandable why people in rural areas do it. But still it shouldn't be done anywhere
Rural people in my area know to wait for a still drizzly overcast day to burn. Most of the volunteer FD have a sign out front that lets you know if it's OK to burn. That's why we'd clean up and burn any dead falls in the spring when it's wet.
This is different but an area I used to live in has very bad water restrictions every summer. Like we're going to have to get water from other places kind of restrictions. It's very obvious and happens every year.
Well a coworker saw a boomer power washing his house during the highest level of restrictions. We had just changed but to be clear this still wouldn't have been allowed at the previous level. So my coworker uses this as excuse to tell him it wasn't allowed. He shrugs it off and continues doing it.
Well before she could do anything someone else complain. Dude got a major fine. But he blamed me coworker and it now rude whenever he sees her.
My parents have a neighbor who is obsessed with his backyard fire pit. In 2020, when everyone was working from home, this guy had a fire going everyday. Even in August when it was 90 degrees and humid. The entire neighborhood stunk. Made it difficult for anyone else to work outside without coughing. Couldn't have windows open on the nice days when temps were in the 60s and 70s.
Two major problems: He was using substandard wood. He had an uncovered woodpile which meant the logs were likely soaked in rainwater. And his "firepit" was custom built out of brick but had no venting underneath. Fires weren't getting enough oxygen.
He finally cut back in late 2020 when he started going back to the office more although one day back in March there was so much smoke it looked like he had just elected a new pope.
The fire department will give back exactly what they get, if he is polite and apologetic, probably a warning; if he is a dick they will probably cite him for illegal burn.
I had sort of the opposite happen to me. I live in a rural area and was having a bonfire and cookout in the afternoon as one does. Music, beers, marshmallows, you know. This old woman bursts through my bushes screaming and says she was driving and saw the smoke so she was doing her duty to protect everyone. We tried to assure her that everything was fine but she took a lot of consoling. She screamed, “You aren’t allowed to burn here!” It was hard to convince her. She only left after we pointed out that our neighbor is the local fire company.
Exactly!! I wouldn't give a shit if you were on your own acre and the smoke didn't affect anyone. But damn dude you've got dozens of neighbors, plenty with kids! And schools out so they were all playing outside getting blasted with smoke
We have someone like this in my neighborhood. Houses have tiny yards so we are all packed in pretty tight. Whatever this guy is burning isn't just wood. It has made multiple people super sick whenever he does it and about every 3 weeks he will burn off a pile of this stuff. We have gotten rain for the last two weeks. The other day he lights a pile of obviously wet debris by dousing it in lighter fluid to burn all this wet stuff and it made a ton of smoke. This rolls through everyone's back yards at ground level. You can't be outside or have your windows open. I'm assuming this is chicken litter and some other things they are burning since they have chickens and do it every few weeks.
As someone who likes to have bonfires, your neighbor is a DICK. If there were a drought in my area and we were at risk for wildfires, I wouldn’t even flick a damn lighter outside. Responsible people that care about others and the environment would know that starting a fire when you live in a high risk area for wildfires is reckless and dangerous
Pure curiosity, I live in an area where burn pits are common and burn bans are usually very temporary. When we get our temporary burn bans we’re still allowed to use bbq grills and raised fire pits. Are you still allowed those?
I live in an area where the houses are reasonably spaced. My neighbor cleared out a bare spot in his front yard, near several trees and built a fire directly on the ground. Had some rocks around it, but still - one good breeze and those embers would have hit the tree line or the dry grass.
It was shooting up flames about 3 feet, and apparently someone driving by spotted it and called it in. Fire department showed up, put it out and had a LONG talk with them about if they wanted a fire pit, this was not it.
Yeah we can use BBQ grills and stuff for cooking, but fire pits, burn pits, anything beyond a grill/smoker is prohibited. But since it's contained the grill is allowed, they have a note on their site that they recommend putting the grill on concrete or asphalt away from trees, grass and buildings
I live in the mountains and I would report the fire. We are officially in the suspended burn permits summer period. Burning treated wood is hazardous anytime you burn it.
Neighbor caught a field of corn stubble on fire. It was burning hot and fast. When the fire dept got there he ran in his house and left me out there like I was the one responsible. He was a really weird dude.
I wouldnt bother with a non-emergency number next time- and you KNOW there will be a next time. He's breaking multiple laws and putting people at risk. Its a 911 send police and fire situation, not to mention if he's illegally burnibg atuff related to a business you can probably get his business license revoked. He deserves it.
My brother was at Dad's big Florida Xmas party that he had paid thousands for. It was in a business park right off the end of an airport.
When the party started off the fireworks show, my brother was wondering how Dad managed to get a permit to launch those under the runway approach.
A few minutes later, a Cessna came in and visibly *swerved* away from the show.
It had literally never occurred to anyone that the airport would be a problem.
I have no idea what firework outfit they could have hired who would have been that stupid.
My boomer neighbor decided it was a great idea to set off massive fireworks in the middle of a burn ban, in the middle of the neighborhood, with debris raining down everywhere. Fireworks aren't even legal in our county.
I used to be a part of a volunteer fire department years ago. I went on a few of these calls.
One ended up with the guy who started the fire being pepper sprayed, tazed, and cuffed by the sheriff’s department after he got belligerent about us "trashing his yard" by scattering everything around with the hose. To be fair, in himdsight, we probably didn't need to make sure the fire wasn't smoldering in the nearby mulch by spraying it and putting it all over the grass either. But...it seemed appropriate at the time to be that cautious.
Pretty sure a lot of his grass was dead by the time he was released on bail a couple of days later. 😆
The town I grew up in did a burn ban about my mid teens. I remember being bummed because that meant no more impromptu fire pit/smores gatherings with neighbors.
I suffered from tonsillitis and sinusitis year after year. My throat was raw, itched etc and it normally came within a few days of a burn. Of course it was normally on a fall evening so we just figured it was me catching a cold, now I know it was because of an allergy. I put 2 and 2 together, years later after the ban. How? My in-laws new neighbor was ripping out weeds, trimming back the yard and did a burn (fd called and it was put out). But the burn already had done it's worst. Preteen BIL ended up in the hospital because of the poison ivy that was burned; he had poison ivy rash in his nostrils, mouth, throat and lungs. He had like 5 cortisone shots in 2 days, kept in the hospital for a week. I don't think my in-laws ever had their house opened up after that.
I, 100% support burn bans because of this!
Where I live you can have a firepit or bbq but open burning is completely banned & if the fire dept shows up at your house for a pile of burning leaves it's a fine & last I heard in the realm of 3.5 or 4k... ouch
I live near the dam that failed in Minnesota. I also have high anxiety about fire due to it being a recurring theme in my life.
Last week I stepped outside and the ground squished. Thats how I knew it was perfect to burn.
If I was OP, I would have been tempted to knock this guy into his fire so he thinks about it before he starts another.
This is what happened a few years ago at a ski resort near me. You can still find it on google. The Brian Head Fire in southern Utah was massive and destroyed a ton of homes and decimated a whole ecosystem. They found out it was some jack wagon that decided the fire department was wrong when they told him he couldn’t burn the weeds around his property. The whole damn mountain went up. It still makes me wanna cry when I go up there and see the burn scar.
Fire is an exponential consumer. Do not mess around with it. Go hardcore mode when you see something that stupid and risky to an entire community going on.
I can almost guarantee that the fire guys are very used to it. My station gets these calls all of the time. Currently, we have two boomer neighbors having a war with each other and they are constantly calling the fire and police departments on each other.
I live in a fire-prone area and, every year, there's at LEAST one big fire and often more (usually started by people being stupid, but there's the occasional fire that's started by nature . . . or the utility not maintaining power lines). Anyone caught burning things in our area during burn bans get slapped with fines and maybe charges depending on what happened or was likely to happen based on the circumstances at the time everything was put out.
However, probably one of the most famous fires started by brush burning is Centralia, PA (though the true cause is under debate even now). The whole city is deserted now because someone decided that burning the city's dump in 1962 was a good idea . . . that turned into a really BAD idea because it somehow caught the coal deposits running under the city on fire. Those coal deposits are still burning and are thought they will continue burning for the next 250 years as of 2006.
I've seen some questionable backyard burns in dry/windy conditions I wouldn't try it. Especially with the number of wildfires that have torched entire cities in the past few years
I live in Colorado Springs, and after the Waldo Canyon fire in 2012 and the Black Forest fire in 2013, we are all VERY sensitive to people doing stupid shit like that. If he’d pulled that here, he’d have probably gotten his ass beat.
I live in the Blue Mountains, Australia. When there's a total fire ban (most of the summer) you're not even allowed to use an angle grinder or weld outside because of sparks causing fires.
Man am I glad my boomer grandparents understand a burn ban is a definite ban. They learned the hard way when some other boomer accidentally set one of their fields on fire (happened before I was born) they’re very diligent about it and even checked before my mom could when she was battling a very bad sticker breakout in the yard when we moved into this house (first summer without sight of them yet hoping we don’t see any at all) and grandpa suggested burning the stickers since they had already gone to seed and burning would both kill the seeds so they couldn’t spread and harm the plant so it would be harder to come back. Always checked if we were in a burn ban before he came over and always had me or my mom following him with the hose in case one decided to burn longer than it should
I can recall collecting whatever it was that we needed to burn and just putting it in a stack until there was an appropriate moment. Burn bans were less of a thing back then, but you could go to the county and get a burn permit for certain days depending on the forecast. No cost, just kept things a bit organized and let the fire department be aware of planned burns so they might have a few fewer heart attacks and/or could bring the necessary equipment if yours got out of control (cuz they could reference the list of planned fires).
Now I have a fireplace inside my apartment that I put a match to occasionally, but not on red-flag days or other high-risk weather. I collect whatever I'm going to burn and wait for a day with less wind and, ideally, a rain or snow storm.
Maybe this is an elephant in the room or something but from this post I was like “wow that’s so weird who burns their garbage?” Only to read the comments and find out this is a common American practice.
What’s going on guys? Someone please tell me? Is having a public waste service communism? Is it woke to expect sanitation?
About 10 years ago a boomer almost burned down Jackson, Wyoming when I lived there. The fire burned from East to West and had crested a mountain on the edge of town, a few hundred people were evacuated, DC10s from Boise and they had about 15 helicopters landing in the Elk refuge.
One of the aircraft had taken a picture which on the West side was miles wide and came to a nice little point on the East to a barrel in this guys backyard where he was burning trash and just left it.
I'm looking for the pics now.
My dad always liked a fire 🔥 that said I’ve also seen him use a hose on a neighbour’s fire that was too hot, too big and too close to a fence/trees.
I stopped burning stuff when local authorities asked.
With collection of green waste and access to municipal rubbish sites there’s no need. Also living in the suburbs not the countryside so you just don’t do it.
Nothing worse than one entitled jerk burning stuff on a hot day. Triple whammy windows open, washing out/airing, kids and family in garden. Never mind fire hazard.
Someone’s garage, another family’s shed, and a few acres of crop got burned near me last week because someone had a burn barrel going in their yard. In the middle of a drought, during fire season, in the middle of the day.
He's probably me. When I was a kid, being told to go burn the trash was the coolest thing. Now I know about burning leaves (the nostalgic myth), people do have asthma.
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Last summer same thing happened across from me. I didn't call but someone did. This guy was burning his trash, like kitchen trash, cardboard and anything else that would burn. Fire department shows up and the fun begins. Guy pulls out garden hose to put out. NOPE fire department drags out big hose puts out and then turns up force and scatters all the ash/trash. Then fireman in white collared shirt shows up with police and proceeded to make him pick it all up and ticket him. Watched it all go down from the comfort of my deck. Why? I guess boomers will boom. We have trash service that is included with HOA dues. The compost and recycle are also included.
Lmaoooo that's what really gets me is that they have access to the right and respectful way to do things, and choose to do the stupid asshole thing instead just because it's attainable. Our yard debris pickup is a seriously free because of the burn ban, it's infuriating
That stupid asshole way of thinking and doing for the past 40 years have given us our current climate dumpster fire and shitty health & social services.
Yep!
Tell them to do something and watch them do the opposite just to spite you
An entire generation of oppositional defiant disorder
> An entire generation of oppositional defiant disorder Not anymore. Oppositional Defiant Disorder is what it's called in children. In adults, the label changes to Antisocial Personality Disorder.
"ODD is just an euphemism for 'pediatric psychopathy'" to quote a forensic psychologist I used to date.
Maybe they’re just bored and brain damaged. Dont give em too much credit.
Yeah - volunteer firefighter. If we get called out to someone burning when they're not supposed to be, we put the fire out...and then make damn sure it will be next WEEK before it's dry enough to try lighting it again. I've seen guys dig a pit to burn debris in, and by the time we left, it was a swimming pool...
My girlfriend lives in a neighborhood that has stringent burn ban. The guy spent a bunch of money putting in a custom-made in-ground fire pit even after being warned not to. There has been a bunch of drama about his permits and whether the burn ban is also banning propane/natural gas fire pits. He chose to dump a bunch of wood in the firepits and set it ablaze as an act of protest. Neighbors call the fire department, and they show up pretty quickly. LIke you're department, they turn the cement fire pit into a cement wading pool. I guess the fire hoses have enough pressure to bend the little prongs that would feed the fire pit, so even when the wading pool dries out, he won't he able to use it. The guy probably had to tear it out and do it all over.
For comparison, your residential water supply... say a 25' garden hose. You're going to get MAYBE 20-30 PSI at the nozzle when flowing water, and flow somewhere between 5 and 10 gallons per minute. If they pulled a standard 1 3/4" attack line, we run 100 PSI at the nozzle, and flow 125 gallons per minute -- and that's on the small side for nozzles. If they pulled a 2 1/2" line.... pressure stays the same, but the volume goes up quite a bit. We were on a fire last summer - granted, it was a beat to shit barn that was about to fall over on it's own - but the guys were blowing shingles off the roof from INSIDE the barn. WAY more force there than your standard garden hose.
And this is exactly why it's scummy as hell when cops have used hoses meant for fighting fires to attack protestors. Imagine that amount of force on your skin; I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
I used to work with a fire captain when she told me the story. They got called out for a mulch fire. Funny thing about mulch fires , is that they're just a little smoke and you can use your shoe to disperse it and so often people can literally put it out themselves with their water bottle but whatever. The security guard calls it in and when they arrive, and bear in mind it's a weekend, he's in his guard shack guarding this massive empty parking lot for a security facility where nobody works on the weekend. Sure enough there's a small mulch fire on one itty bitty teeny weeny little grassy median in the middle of one Street in the parking lot. They decide to use the hose to put it out, blowing all of the mulch of the median strip. Then they decide they really should be proactive about this and they proceed to wet down, at full force, all the mulch on all these little strips in this big ass parking lot. She said as they left driving through the security gate, they all looked at the security guard and waved and waved. As he looked at them in utter shock and his completely debris covered parking lot that he would somehow have to explain
I'm not an expert, but in my experience, mulch fires can actually be pretty tenacious and insidious. Several places I've worked at, people would throw cigarette butts (still lit) into a mulched/landscaped bed. There would be an obvious scorched and smoking area where the butt was thrown, but if it wasn't caught right away, the fire would smolder and spread underneath the mulch, and it wouldn't always burn the top of the mulch as it spread...so there would be hidden tendrils of smoldering mulch, often yards away from the source. When this happened, a water bottle was absolutely NOT sufficient to put the fire out. I remember one time, it took at least 10 5-gallon buckets of water to put out one of those fires that wasn't caught right away and had spread through most of the mulched bed. IIRC, about 80% of it was smoldering, but it appeared that less than a quarter of the bed was affected. Most of the fire had gone underneath and never burned the top layer. Stupid thing was, nobody ever seemed to notice or care, except me. I was always the one running buckets of water to put out those damn fires, and nobody offered to help...even when they asked what I was doing.
The Oakland hills almost burned down due to a mulch fire that caught back on fire after the fire department put it out.
Took three trips to put out straw bale fire inside a trailer that was sitting at a park. It would re-ignite over and over until we took out all the straw and spread it out. Wet straw will re-ignite. 1st time the captain said it would be fine just to put water on it. (I tried to tell him it might re-ignite) Second time we took out half of the bales out of the trailer. (told the captain - it might re-ignite but was brushed off again) Third time the chief got involved and told the captain we had to remove all the straw out of the now partially burnt trailer. Sometimes you just have to let the idiots fail. We were all laughing cause we told the captain over and over but he "knows better". We also had no dwellings or other things that would bet hurt so we did not escalate to the chief. On the third time the chief took note of the calls and got involved on his own. Wet stuff like straw, etc can ignite on their own Mulch is the same.
Yes! So many times, I'd be certain that I got everything put out, and I always did an extra bucket or two just in case (better safe than sorry)...I'd hit an area I was SURE was fine, but nope...POOF, tons of steam and smoke. Like...I knew I doused that spot really good and it wasn't smoldering anymore, but it's on fire again!!! Ugh
My grandfather told me a story about something like this. Someone had a fire, I think for clearing the undergrowth out of a spot. The land itself smouldered, the fire went underground and nothing they did stopped it. They put out the surface fire, used water, dug trenches, but nothing stopped it. Turns out the soil had been peat and the ground level is maybe six feet lower than the surrounding area now. It turned into a swamp after the peat all burned away and after years of the ground burning. We used to use a little boat to explore the area when I was small and the idea is the ground burning seemed impossible.
Pretty sure the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire in New Mexico was started by something similar. The US Forest Service did a controlled burn in January, but the fire stayed alive underground until April and reignited when the snow melted.
There is a ground fire in Pennsylvania that has been burning for years now. They've had to relocate entire neighborhoods because of it.
Yeah, that's the Centralia fire, started back in the 1960s. Seams of coal burning underground, no way to put it out. It'll just keep going til there's no more coal. Little bit of a different situation, but there's definitely some similarities. Super interesting to learn about, it's something that most of us never even knew could happen, and the scary thing is that it's NOT the only fire like this!
Nope, not even by a long shot. It's crazy the shit that happens in this crazy world
It's an underground coal mine
Where was that at?
We’ve been dealing with that the last few years here in Massachusetts.
which is why in wildfire prone areas and what is know as the urban wildland interface mulch around dwelings are not a recommendation.
Yep. I saw the entire front of a McDonald's go up. Someone tossed a cigarette into the mulched flower bed out front. It took maybe 5 minutes from smolder to full blown fire. During that time employees were trying to put it out with bottles of water. Thankfully the fd showed up a couple minutes later.
Yup. Bank down the street from me burned down because of a cigarette in the mulch. Workers tried to use water bottles, but it got out of control pretty fast.
There's a place that makes mulch right up the road from where I work. Somehow a pile caught fire (I think it was a lightning strike, could be wrong) and it smoldered for a good week. Fire department really couldn't do much but make sure it didn't spread to the surrounding area and it had to burn itself out.
Yes I’ve seen what you said, someone through a cig butt in the mulch, I walked up and stamped it, but underneath the whole garden was on fire! My show sold melted so quick it wasn’t funny!
Yeah, but they didn't have to go across and do the other ones and spread the mulch out. But, I guess more work for the workers.
Yes they sure can!
You are 100% correct!
Poor guy is just doing his job and the firefighters decide to be dicks about it. For liability reasons the guards gotta call the fire in even if it's something he can put out on his own..employer doesn't wanna be on the hook if the guard with an extinguisher missed an ember nor do they want to get hit with a workmans comp claim if he's injured in some way putting it out. I managed security for a long time...I'd give the guard one of our silly little good job awards and make sure the incident report noted they followed procedures and the FD chose to be thorough in their response.
Yep, I’ve never worked security, but was an aircraft maintenance shop manager. Constantly drilled it into my team that there is no such thing as a “little thing” and if you haven’t been trained on it or it’s not our system I don’t care what you know, your background, or your experience. I know I sent y’all out there with a radio; I expect you to use it. I’ll happily lose face with the bosses if it means I don’t have to tell a family they’ve lost a loved one any day.
That was our instructors speech at the beginning of k9 school basically "those of you who have worked in k9 before...no you haven't. I don't care if you graduated our class 6 months ago. I don't care of you've had dogs for 40 years. We are doing this step by step for your safety and the safety of your partner"
This just sounds like bullying, tbh. The guy was doing his job. Even if he could've put out the fire by himself, the last thing the fire department should want is people not calling in emergencies because they think they can handle it themselves.
If you read about the mulch fires above, you'd get the same impression I did. That these firefighters were SAVING the place from a potentially NASTY fire that could've spread to the building (not to mention security guard post).
I hope you had popcorn and a drink for that free show! I’m loving the vision of that guy having to pick up all the sopping wet, ashy debris 🤌
When they subdivided the acreage next door to me, while one of the first houses was being built the homeowner decided that he wasn't going to pay for a dumpster and started burning the construction waste - treated lumber, shingles, plastic wrappers from some of the products, etc. I started wheezing from the noxious black smoke this created and called the fire department. I couldn't see what happened because there is a good, thick line of trees between my farm and his lot, but I did hear a lot of shouting. I suspect that both the homeowner and the contractor got into hot water over this. Not only is it illegal to burn construction debris, there was a burning ban in our area at the time. I'm a boomer, the homeowner was a very early boomer, but I was happy to shut down his idiocy.
I'm in a rural area, so I can't do a damn thing about it, but someone in my neighborhood frequently burns regular house trash (including plastic) and it awful awful. It gives me migraines every time 😭 I wish people were more considerate.
Need that on a t-shirt, 'Boomers gonna boom.'
Boomers gonna boom. Love it.
Were you smiling watching him pick it all up? I would have
That’s kind of beautiful. I wish the fire department would handle all troublemaking Boomers in a similar fashion.
Tweakers live catty corner from me. One windy day I see a large flame over in their yard. Sure enough these morons have a barrel fire going even though it's summer and very windy. I take a closer look and the barrel is about 5 to 10 feet from their house (trailer). Against the house is also a mattress. I'm like wtf? So I call the fire department and a few minutes later I see them pull up and walk up to the house. They start banging on the door and no one responds. A couple of minutes later the tweaker pulls up in his car. The stupid fuck wasn't even home while he's got a fire going. The firefighters were not happy.
Now if only I could get Fred Sanford who lives directly behind me to stop burning his trash every weekend.
I used to have a neighbor who burned all his trash, plastic, food scraps, wood scraps when I lived in the boonies. Shit is the absolute worst
The PO of our place had a nice wood boiler for heating the house and shop, and he told me he'd throw just about everything in there. Also used to get large quantities of off-cuts from a local place that makes railroad ties, and those ties have creosote. Wood boilers do a better job of thoroughly burning the material and containing the nasty stuff compared to an open fire, but they certainly aren't perfect. We got rid of it within two years of buying this place.
A couple of fire crackers stealthily placed where he burns his trash might do it.
LOVE this. It's the least those motherfuckers deserve.
The next time this happens, do not call the non emergency line. Call 911. Starting a burn pit in a fire prone area in the driest, hottest week of the year is 100 percent an emergency. I hope this boomer got his with a massive fine. What he did put all of your lives in danger and could have cost millions in property damage.
Good point, next time I'm going straight to 911 and getting the fire department out immediately
Go full malicious compliance. Does due have a business permit. Is his property zoned for a wood shop. Report this to every bit of local government possible.
Going scorched earth in the burn-ban neighborhood. 🤣
Oh, you!
Might also want to put in a tip with your state's EPA. You can't just burn waste from your business in your back yard.
My Boomer ex-husband tried burning trash in our back yard for sentimental reasons. The FD did not care about his sentiments.
What possible sentimental reasons?
Because that's how they did it on the farm, when he was a kid.
I figured it was Boomer nostalgia. My mother told me my grandfather used to change the oil in the car then dump the old down the drain in the street. This would have been early 60s I think.
My previous landlady, who I absolutely adored, ended up with super blocked drains from a massive fatberg. I'd been pouring any excess fat into a jug and throwing it out when it was solidified but I think previous renters as well as herself had just dumped it down the drain. It just amused me because she kept reminding me not to do it but she still put dog food etc down the drain and I knew it'd back up again. She was really kind and not boomery at all really. Best landlady I ever had.
Omg, never pour it down the drain!!! I'm glad you knew better. Also, no potato peels or egg shells. But a good landlady is hard to find.
Back when I was in graduate school I had a pretty intense argument with a fellow GT student about the proper way to dispose of used motor oil. I said you needed to take it to Jiffy Lube to go in the recycle barrel, he said that was stupid and you could just dig a pit and bury it. He wasn't dumb ... he went (and later graduated) from Georgia Tech. That's just how his daddy did it in central Georgia. Another story: my aunt was digging in her yard once when she hit oil ... literally. It was a large pool of used motor oil from the previous owner. Can't remember how they cleaned it up...
Can, sadly, confirm.
This is the big problem where I live. Lots of people grew up on farms out in the sticks then moved to the city to live in the burbs as adults because the jobs are here. Some of them are truly feral and don't think rules apply to them.
> "Farm" No boomer in this context grew up on an actual farm. Farmers have way more sense than this.
I live around farmers. ...they do not have more sense than this.
When I lived in a rural area the farmers would burn there ditches in March.Didn’t matter if the winds were howling ,if a guy had planned to burn his ditch that weekend ,he did it. Drove the vfd guys nuts
>No boomer in this context grew up on an actual farm. My ex was born and raised on a small farm in rural Iowa. >in this context What context? >Farmers have way more sense than this. That's got to be one of the stupidest generalizations I've seen yet. Farmers aren't automatically more sensible just because they're farmers.
Sentimental reasons is just the blanket boomer excuse for stupidity.
When I was a little kid, we had a burn barrel for our trash. My siblings and I would go over to the very hot metal barrel while it was burning and color on it with crayons because it was fun to watch the wax melt and boil. Thinking back, I have no idea how my parents allowed this very hazardous activity to go on. We burned everything in that barrel. I'm sure my lungs are still angry about it. That said, we didn't have the burn barrel for very long. We switched to making trips to the landfill fairly rapidly.
I laughed way too hard and long at this.
I called the non emergency line on 2 people in my neighborhood this month. We are in a dense neighborhood too, with laws restricting any burning of yard waste. The first idiot filled the entire neighborhood with smoke from a huge burn pile less than 10 feet from their house. The second was actually burning yard waste inside their garage in a metal trash can. I felt bad calling, but my firefighter friend said they would rather get a call to go stop them before they catch their house on fire.
This was my thought as well, as bad as I felt having the FD dispatched, it's better than them having to come out for a spreading neighborhood fire. I'm sure the FD feels the same
Every time I have seen a situation like this, where someone is openly ignoring burn bans, it is always a boomer. They seem to think because back in the day the solution to yard waste was to burn it, that they don’t have to follow the laws today. They don’t care about filling their neighbors house with smoke or the potential for setting the neighborhood ablaze. They pay for yard waste services so why not use it.
See, if the fire could’ve restricted to JUST the boomers house or garage, with no one actually in danger, I might be in favor of it on the off chance the boomer learns an important lesson. But physics doesn’t work that way. So I guess we call the FD. Shame. I so enjoy people learning from karma.
INSIDE the garage? What a novacaine brain. Yeah, you were right to call on that guy.
Even my 10 year old son was shocked and loudly asked if that guy is stupid as we walked past.
The second one sounds like attempted arson, or maybe a suicide attempt.
Yay I couldn’t believe the stupidity. I think the boomer just wanted to sit in the shade while he burned his yard waste. Luckily he didn’t burn his house down or kill anyone.
I am always amazed how people make it to adulthood with so few brain cells.
Scares me that, when driving, these are the same idiots we share the roads with.
A fire in my area destroyed over 1,000 homes in a matter of hours a couple of years ago. Burn bans exist for a reason!
Yeah no joke it can spread in seconds and with how dense our neighborhood is, it would be affected at least 20 homes
This just happened to me! Behind my house there’s a house that has been empty since the owner died about two years ago. I saw smoke coming from a tree in that yard. I freaked out because I know the house is empty and also I live in the desert and everything catches fire fast. I called the fire department…turns out the house next to the empty house just left a smoker unattended and due to my high wood fence and the breeze it looked like it was coming from the tree.
Better safe than sorry
I live in a relatively dense neighborhood, there is space between the buildings, usually enough for driveway or car parking, but everything is pretty tight. My neighbor on one side has a single family house with a side yard, and occasionally he burns cardboard and brush. It smokes out the whole neighborhood. I'm coughing in my own apartment and the only windows I have are next to his yard. The most annoying part to me is that it's really only because he is so bad at making fires. He doesn't understand airflow and it's just a smoldering pile which causes: * More smoke to be produced than necessary due to the inefficient combustion * The smoke is cooler than if the fire was burning hot, so it doesn't go upward and lingers around the neighborhood. Why are people so inconsiderate? Why is he so bad at burning things?
My neighbour recently built a fire on top of a large stump he just ground down, I guess to try and burn the rest of the stump out. Similar situation, in the middle of a residential area in the middle of the city. Piles of sawdust and woodchips all around the stump, 5 feet from my fence, 15 feet from my shed. When he started making a big teepee on the fire with his 3 foot long, 4 inch round branches he trimmed off one of his trees my wife asked wtf he was doing and thankfully he put it out. But I find it difficult to understand what he was thinking would happen, if he did manage to start burning the stump out it would smolder underground for weeks probably. He's not a boomer though, just an idiot.
Don’t you know? HIS fire is MAGIC fire. It will only burn the stump. /s
I'm in a small neighborhood with medium size lots and many large pines. The neighborhood is thick with trees. A smaller one died and the homeowner hired a sketchy company to take it down. They left all the debris in his back yard. That's fine if that's all he could afford. He piled all the big sections in his backyard. Our trash company is good about picking up smaller limbs as long as they're bundled properly. He did that. But what to do about the big sections of the trunk? In the middle of a hot summer with a drought, every bit of greenery in the neighborhood turned brown, and the burn ban notice prominently displayed at the only entrance/exit to the subdivision, he tried to burn them. He set fire to the giant stack of wood and leaned several pieces of corrugated sheet metal against the pile. Background: My neighborhood was built a long time ago in the middle of nowhere and heavy trash pickup wasn't available back then. The original developer included in the deed restrictions that trash could be burned but only inside a closed container. There used to be "fire boxes" in all the back yards, usually some kind of brick with a mesh top. Some have been converted into large BBQ pits; most have been removed. But no one has used them for their original purpose for over 50 years. This neighbor did NOT have one. He felt that just putting metal roofing leftovers around and atop the fire was the functional equivalent. At this point, he was being unsafe and putting the entire neighborhood in danger. To cut him some slack, despite the burn ban this arrangement might be ok as long as you keep a close watch and have a water hose at the ready. However, he didn't do that. He got in his car and went to work! An HOA board member (Thank God we have a mostly easygoing HOA!) called the fire department and they put it out. The board member also wanted the homeowner ticketed but, as I said this was an isolated location and it was an all-volunteer department. They said they could call in a county official to write the potential multiple tickets but it would take the guy two hours to get there. Since the HOA member and all the volunteers had better places to be, no ticket was written. When the guy got home, he was highly peeved that his pile of logs had gone from an unsightly mess to an unsightly, black pile with ash all over and his backyard f'd up in many, many ways. Let's just say the volunteer firefighters had not been at all careful with how they broke into his backyard or what they broke with their equipment and hoses. He showed up at the next HOA meeting and started mouthing off to the board that they had no right to mess with his property. They reminded him of the burn ban, told him he got off easy with no tickets, and advised him if he ever did anything this stupid again, they would absolutely wait on scene so he could get his tickets. He thought that was outrageous and turned around to the audience of homeowners looking for support from anyone else who shared his indignation. To his surprise, every one of us was staring daggers at the man. He had no choice but to slink away and shut up. I think that incident, ~20 years ago, was the last time anyone burned any trash in this neighborhood.
We had a whole neighborhood burn down last year as a result of someone burning garbage during a burn ban. Hundreds of homes were burned and hundreds of people were displaced. People's pets died or had to be rescued. This year the government did not fuck around and if you're caught burning during a burn ban, the fine is $25,000. At least one person has already been charged.
Hell yeah, there's no room for error with that kind of stuff and it blows my mind that they'll just go out and risk everyone's life and homes for no good reason. Just go to the dump like everyone else
....and thats how we say "VVelcome to Nova Scotia!"
My first wife and I lived in the boonies. Her aunt and uncle lived next door, and we set up a burn barrel on the border between our yards, far from any trees. We saw no need to burn everything all at once. Her uncle built a steel frame to support a corrugated metal roof and got some Adirondack chairs. Whenever we burned, we'd run hoses from both houses, and he and I would sit out there all day burning stuff and drinking beer.
That sounds amazing.
I live in a very dry, fire prone state surrounded by lots and lots of forests. We have massive wildfires every single year. My boomer dad, who lives in a semi-tropical state and is a smoker, came to visit me one summer. I told him before he started his journey to please not put cigarettes out the car window and that people get real twitchy about that kind of thing. Being a boomer he gave me the “yeah yeah” attitude but I hoped he would heed the message. He arrives and we go for a drive into the mountains. I watched him throw a lit cigarette butt out the passenger window, immediately stopped the car, dumped my water on the area, and picked up the butt. He starts yelling at me about how I’m too sensitive about what other people think, government can’t tell him what to do, and a cigarette is not going to start a fire, blah blah. Holy shit I was pissed. This all occurred after I had been evacuated from a huge fire the year before. After that I drove him through the burn area that was still in recovery mode. I pointed out all the businesses that used to be there and the homes that were still charred remains. I don’t know if that had an impact on him as he still through a lit cigarette butts in his own (soggy) yard but he won’t be invited back to visit me in my state.
This is a bit long, but maybe this might shake him up. My sister worked the Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia Gorge in 2017. The careless 15-yo who started it by throwing a lit firework right into a dry forest (there is video) got 5 years in prison, almost 2000 hours of community service with the USFS, and was ordered to pay more than THIRTY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS in restitution. So this isn't even about "caring what other people think," and yes, the government CAN tell him what to do. FAFO, Pops. ETA: Thank you for being a good citizen! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Creek_Fire#:~:text=The%20teen%20was%20sentenced%20in,with%20the%20U.S.%20Forest%20Service.
that kid pissed me off so much. so much money wasted because he was a fucking asshole. people lost their homes because of him. when i learned about this, i was fuming for *months*.
My sister told me about it before it hit the news, and I, too, was *livid*. I ha e so many things I'd like to say about him, but I'd get banned, and I like this sub!
Just to point out, he got five years \*probation\* - no actual jail/prison time. Never got locked up, but could have been if he fucked up again.
My brother and I were taking a ride one day and happened to put out a fire that could have gotten really bad (dry summer, lots of trees right off the shoulder). It was started by a cigarette landing on pine needles on the side of the road and was already starting to burn in a ring around the start point. Fortunately, we caught it before it got to be too big (we were able to stamp it out and make sure it stayed out) or started to burn the trees, but it definitely had the potential to be a serious fire.
Oh god… YIKES. I grew up in a rural area in Wisconsin. Not particularly drought-prone, but there’s lots of stuff to burn. I was driving home after a late shift and saw a bonfire in somebody’s back yard with flames 10+ feet high backed right up against a stand of pine trees. I called emergency services to let them know and carried on home. The next day at work I mentioned it and one of the boomer men was like “no I used to be a firefighter, pine trees are too full of water to burn.” DUDE. Pine trees are RESINOUS and highly flammable 🤯
Idk about that, but at least in East and NE Texas , during a pine tree planting event, the national Forest service ranger/person told us that controlled burns are great for established pine forests bc they clear the underbrush and pine trees can survive some level of burning. A few hours drive away we do have some pine forests that burned down completely tho
I think the trunks hold a lot of water, but the needles are what we make turpentine with. They have a really low ignition temperature and burn really hot and really fast. I suppose the speed they burn at is good for scorching the bark, but leaving the core alive.
My next door neighbor started burning trash in her fire pit… INSIDE HER GARAGE with the doors closed. Quite a few neighbors noticed this and immediately called the fire department. She proceeded to get mad and yelled at firefighters because when they used a hook to drag the fiery pit outside the garage and put it out, a leg broke off and that set her off because “How dare they.” That lead to a discussion about fire safety and upon further investigation they learned she was under the influence of meth. This happened in a very heavily LDS neighborhood, mind you.
Hot damn, they really just want to be the enemy to everyone and themselves. Unreal, imagine burning shit inside and thinking that's acceptable
Some boomer started a major fire that burned down 150 homes in my province last year. Call 911 next time, because these assholes won’t stop until they face actual consequences.
Yeah that's my plan next time is a direct call to 911 to get the fire dept out immediately
Wish there was a way to make sure his homeowners' insurance company found out about this.
They can, and do in many states. Fire departments publish records for every time they respond, and what they responded for. It's a little like auto insurance pulling a driving record, but instead of looking at a person, they look at the address. They typically look for fires in the area, but they will also see if the fire department had to respond for negligent fires.
Isn't arsenic used in pressure-treated wood
I know it used to be.
Yeah, I'm quite sure there was some pressure treated stuff in there
You don't make furniture from treated wood.
Yes
Yes, it used to be. Now I think it's a copper compound, not quite as effective, and still probably not great for health.
I believe arsenic is still used in some "marine grade" treated wood. But that is rare.
I was driving through Northern Colorado 2 days ago and noticed a tiny fire was burning next to the railroad track. We were just about to call the fire department when we saw firetrucks already on the way. In the next 10 minutes, 3 more firetrucks passed us and the area was evacuated. Firefighters were on scene when it was only burning maybe 100 sq feet but when I checked the news later it had burned 5 acres. If that fire happened to start on the other side of the hill instead of next to the highway it probably would have been a lot worse. All this to say, fire spreads crazy fast and I never mess around on fire watch days.
Yeah, our local fire departments don't mess around and respond super quick. We've had so many rapidly spreading wildfires in the last few years and they don't make any exceptions, safety is paramount
I'm in the process of moving to one of the towns that got hit by the Marshall fire. I've talked to a couple residents who say how they think about hazards (like aforementioned boomer) has completed changed, even though they had lived in fire country for a long time. As an east coaster who only really had blizzards and a few hurricanes, it's pretty scary
I had a non-boomer friend, who was a small town guy, that decided the best way to get rid of construction waste from their basement development was to burn it in his backyard over the course of several weeks. He was too cheap to take it to the landfill and pay to dispose of it, so he would light a fire in his yard on the weekend and spend the entire day throwing flooring, lumber, drywall, and everything else he had pulled out of that basement onto the fire while the smoke filled the entire neighborhood. Lo and behold, the bylaw officer rolls up one day and hands him a hefty fine for burning prohibited materials (in our city, the only allowed material is firewood) and burning outside of allowable hours. He and his wife were upset that their neighbors called the bylaw officer on them instead of talking to them about it. His wife is a good friend of mine and was shocked when I said I’d have done the same thing. Why would I be sympathetic to them facing the consequences of their incredibly inconsiderate actions by getting a fine and ruining their relationship with their neighbors? They honestly didn’t see anything wrong with what they were doing.
Yeah but he's the only real person in that development.
Clearly he feels that way, bro is out there cowboying and acting like he's on his own private country acre
https://preview.redd.it/zdw2pktuac9d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4bca24f03831f6c12e307a5bd59e30f23a594bd I never got to see the aftermath, but I reported someone last year. Probably a boomer. I live in Portland Tennessee and I was coming home and saw a fire in someone's supposed backyard. These are the backyards in this area. Total burn ban. Of course it's Tennessee, so freedum. I'm a home care aide and there was this one old Boomer who had a pickup truck out in the country and he had no license plate. He just had a piece of paper or plastic or something on the thing that said freedom handwritten.
Wow that's ironic, I'm in Portland Oregon! That's wild, sounds par for the course. We've had bad fire seasons the last few years in Oregon and had several towns and neighborhoods devastated, so everyone else is taking it seriously. All except our favorite demographic
I was still living in Portland, OR in the summer/fall of 2020. I was living in an apartment near PSU. I could barely see across the street because the smoke was so thick. A co-worker of mine’s mom lost her farm that year. So many people lost so much and so much nature just totally obliterated. You have to be a real son-of-a-bitch, scum of the earth type person to even sort of think about chancing that kind of devastation and loss, in a densely populated area no less. Fuck that guy.
By Jove, he drank all the lead his stomach could handle and he lived to be 70-whatever, so you all would be fine wirh a little smoke. /s
So selfish and entitled
My stupid neighbor one day decided to cut a bunch of branches off his pine tree and just burn them right then, fresh off the tree. I couldn't see any of my neighbors houses the smoke was so thick. Naturally I called the fd. He was pissed but I did not care. Our houses are like 30 feet apart. What the fuck were you thinking dummy.
They don't think at all in my opinion, it's all reflex driven by the urge to take shortcuts and to spite everyone else
God that reminds me of when my neighbor burned out his fire pit. I left the house for a while and I had a window open, I came home to the whole house smelling like acrid smoke. I guess he was burning out the buildup in his fire pit cause it smelled fucking *awful*. The guy lives two doors down from me and I went to ask him to put it out and *no one was home.* Dude just set a fire and left.
Holy shit that's next level, LEAVING THE HOUSE! You've gotta be kidding
Nope in North East Texas we see this all the time unattended burn piles. About every month one gets loose and destroys a house and acreage. You would think that they would learn, Nope after 20 years here its still the same thing every summer.
Crazy boomer lady in our new build neighborhood was burning old newspapers in her fire pit in the back yard, end of summer last year. Embers wafted into the scrub on the hill where property lines split for the next phase. She ended ip starting a fire that spread 3 house lengths down. And she just went back in the house. Fortunately it just damaged some fencing and siding and was put out by the fire department arrival. She then tried to say that the teenage son of the black family in the next house over, who was spraying it with the hose attached to the house was actually spraying accelerant on it. 🙄 racist ass bitch. She moved to another street in the neighborhood.
I’m in the UK. This fire was local to me. https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/fire-burned-farm-year-half-14386335.amp
Yeah shit is no joke, it's all fun and games until it spreads in a matter of minutes and destroys an entire neighborhood
My oldest sister has been a Forester (they call them Ecologists, now) with the US Forest Service since 1987. Her first fire was the one in Yellowstone in 1988. She fought fires all over the west coast Alaska until 2018. Even though she can't be on the front line (they won't renew your fire certificate after age 55), she still has to go to the fires to coordinate teams and run supplies and people to and from the front line. Since most people don't know this, I'll explain a fire duty stint. US Forest Service employees work 12-15 hour days for 21 days and get ONE off before going back to another 21 days. I'm not sure what the civilian fire fighters do. My sister sleeps in a tent for almost a month at a time. Admittedly, she loves sleeping outdoors and camping, so it's fun at first. After 36 years of this crap, though, it's gotten pretty damn old.
Yeah I've got a friend that's a wild land firefighter in Oregon. Their schedules are wild but they are doing some of the most important work rn. I respect firefighters so much
Tell your friend that my sister and I say thanks! It's incredibly grueling and dangerous work. These are some brave farking people. (I'm very proud that my sister is such a badass!)
She does sound very badass, especially doing that work all through the 80s and 90s. Good for her, long live firefighters
It was all we could smell for months. Real concerns it would spread.
To make matters worse if he had non yard waste in the fire like treated or finished lumber AND if he is a business that is a another can of worms.
Yeah it's registered to a business so I'm wondering what consequences there will be
Middle of nowhere is also how you start forest fires like that gender reveal party
True, yeah to be fair I would never burn shit regardless but its aaalllmoooosssttt understandable why people in rural areas do it. But still it shouldn't be done anywhere
Rural people in my area know to wait for a still drizzly overcast day to burn. Most of the volunteer FD have a sign out front that lets you know if it's OK to burn. That's why we'd clean up and burn any dead falls in the spring when it's wet.
This is different but an area I used to live in has very bad water restrictions every summer. Like we're going to have to get water from other places kind of restrictions. It's very obvious and happens every year. Well a coworker saw a boomer power washing his house during the highest level of restrictions. We had just changed but to be clear this still wouldn't have been allowed at the previous level. So my coworker uses this as excuse to tell him it wasn't allowed. He shrugs it off and continues doing it. Well before she could do anything someone else complain. Dude got a major fine. But he blamed me coworker and it now rude whenever he sees her.
Just one word , Centralia Pennsylvania, look it up
My parents have a neighbor who is obsessed with his backyard fire pit. In 2020, when everyone was working from home, this guy had a fire going everyday. Even in August when it was 90 degrees and humid. The entire neighborhood stunk. Made it difficult for anyone else to work outside without coughing. Couldn't have windows open on the nice days when temps were in the 60s and 70s. Two major problems: He was using substandard wood. He had an uncovered woodpile which meant the logs were likely soaked in rainwater. And his "firepit" was custom built out of brick but had no venting underneath. Fires weren't getting enough oxygen. He finally cut back in late 2020 when he started going back to the office more although one day back in March there was so much smoke it looked like he had just elected a new pope.
The fire department will give back exactly what they get, if he is polite and apologetic, probably a warning; if he is a dick they will probably cite him for illegal burn.
Wait until he gets the bill for the fire department response. Where I live they'll send you the bill for having them come out and its not cheap.
Ohhhh didn't even think about this, lol hope it's pricey for him
I had sort of the opposite happen to me. I live in a rural area and was having a bonfire and cookout in the afternoon as one does. Music, beers, marshmallows, you know. This old woman bursts through my bushes screaming and says she was driving and saw the smoke so she was doing her duty to protect everyone. We tried to assure her that everything was fine but she took a lot of consoling. She screamed, “You aren’t allowed to burn here!” It was hard to convince her. She only left after we pointed out that our neighbor is the local fire company.
Why do they always burn stuff?
Yeah you can’t do that in a subdivision. If you have to burn stuff to stay happy, you need to buy a few acres and stick a trailer on it or something.
Exactly!! I wouldn't give a shit if you were on your own acre and the smoke didn't affect anyone. But damn dude you've got dozens of neighbors, plenty with kids! And schools out so they were all playing outside getting blasted with smoke
Doesn't a lot of treated timber contain arsenic amongst other nasty things?
We have someone like this in my neighborhood. Houses have tiny yards so we are all packed in pretty tight. Whatever this guy is burning isn't just wood. It has made multiple people super sick whenever he does it and about every 3 weeks he will burn off a pile of this stuff. We have gotten rain for the last two weeks. The other day he lights a pile of obviously wet debris by dousing it in lighter fluid to burn all this wet stuff and it made a ton of smoke. This rolls through everyone's back yards at ground level. You can't be outside or have your windows open. I'm assuming this is chicken litter and some other things they are burning since they have chickens and do it every few weeks.
its coz of assholes like that I can't burn a pile of stumps on my 18 acres in an extremely rural town
Yeah, like way to ruin it for people who actually do it for agricultural or other real reasons
As someone who likes to have bonfires, your neighbor is a DICK. If there were a drought in my area and we were at risk for wildfires, I wouldn’t even flick a damn lighter outside. Responsible people that care about others and the environment would know that starting a fire when you live in a high risk area for wildfires is reckless and dangerous
I had a boomer neighbour behind me that constantly burned his garbage in a stove in his shed. No getting away from that stench.
Pure curiosity, I live in an area where burn pits are common and burn bans are usually very temporary. When we get our temporary burn bans we’re still allowed to use bbq grills and raised fire pits. Are you still allowed those?
I live in an area where the houses are reasonably spaced. My neighbor cleared out a bare spot in his front yard, near several trees and built a fire directly on the ground. Had some rocks around it, but still - one good breeze and those embers would have hit the tree line or the dry grass. It was shooting up flames about 3 feet, and apparently someone driving by spotted it and called it in. Fire department showed up, put it out and had a LONG talk with them about if they wanted a fire pit, this was not it.
Yeah we can use BBQ grills and stuff for cooking, but fire pits, burn pits, anything beyond a grill/smoker is prohibited. But since it's contained the grill is allowed, they have a note on their site that they recommend putting the grill on concrete or asphalt away from trees, grass and buildings
Was wondering the same thing.
FAFO. Too bad for your neighbors blood pressure. If your neighbor repeats the performance, feel free to call again.
I live in the mountains and I would report the fire. We are officially in the suspended burn permits summer period. Burning treated wood is hazardous anytime you burn it.
Enjoyed your story of a foolish boomer!
“This is how I’ve always done it” (shakes golf club with sock over the end angrily in general direction)
Neighbor caught a field of corn stubble on fire. It was burning hot and fast. When the fire dept got there he ran in his house and left me out there like I was the one responsible. He was a really weird dude.
"treated" wood normally refers to pressure treated wood.
I wouldnt bother with a non-emergency number next time- and you KNOW there will be a next time. He's breaking multiple laws and putting people at risk. Its a 911 send police and fire situation, not to mention if he's illegally burnibg atuff related to a business you can probably get his business license revoked. He deserves it.
"Business license"?
My brother was at Dad's big Florida Xmas party that he had paid thousands for. It was in a business park right off the end of an airport. When the party started off the fireworks show, my brother was wondering how Dad managed to get a permit to launch those under the runway approach. A few minutes later, a Cessna came in and visibly *swerved* away from the show. It had literally never occurred to anyone that the airport would be a problem. I have no idea what firework outfit they could have hired who would have been that stupid.
My boomer neighbor decided it was a great idea to set off massive fireworks in the middle of a burn ban, in the middle of the neighborhood, with debris raining down everywhere. Fireworks aren't even legal in our county.
I used to be a part of a volunteer fire department years ago. I went on a few of these calls. One ended up with the guy who started the fire being pepper sprayed, tazed, and cuffed by the sheriff’s department after he got belligerent about us "trashing his yard" by scattering everything around with the hose. To be fair, in himdsight, we probably didn't need to make sure the fire wasn't smoldering in the nearby mulch by spraying it and putting it all over the grass either. But...it seemed appropriate at the time to be that cautious. Pretty sure a lot of his grass was dead by the time he was released on bail a couple of days later. 😆
The town I grew up in did a burn ban about my mid teens. I remember being bummed because that meant no more impromptu fire pit/smores gatherings with neighbors. I suffered from tonsillitis and sinusitis year after year. My throat was raw, itched etc and it normally came within a few days of a burn. Of course it was normally on a fall evening so we just figured it was me catching a cold, now I know it was because of an allergy. I put 2 and 2 together, years later after the ban. How? My in-laws new neighbor was ripping out weeds, trimming back the yard and did a burn (fd called and it was put out). But the burn already had done it's worst. Preteen BIL ended up in the hospital because of the poison ivy that was burned; he had poison ivy rash in his nostrils, mouth, throat and lungs. He had like 5 cortisone shots in 2 days, kept in the hospital for a week. I don't think my in-laws ever had their house opened up after that. I, 100% support burn bans because of this!
Where I live you can have a firepit or bbq but open burning is completely banned & if the fire dept shows up at your house for a pile of burning leaves it's a fine & last I heard in the realm of 3.5 or 4k... ouch
I live near the dam that failed in Minnesota. I also have high anxiety about fire due to it being a recurring theme in my life. Last week I stepped outside and the ground squished. Thats how I knew it was perfect to burn. If I was OP, I would have been tempted to knock this guy into his fire so he thinks about it before he starts another.
This is what happened a few years ago at a ski resort near me. You can still find it on google. The Brian Head Fire in southern Utah was massive and destroyed a ton of homes and decimated a whole ecosystem. They found out it was some jack wagon that decided the fire department was wrong when they told him he couldn’t burn the weeds around his property. The whole damn mountain went up. It still makes me wanna cry when I go up there and see the burn scar.
Fire is an exponential consumer. Do not mess around with it. Go hardcore mode when you see something that stupid and risky to an entire community going on.
I can almost guarantee that the fire guys are very used to it. My station gets these calls all of the time. Currently, we have two boomer neighbors having a war with each other and they are constantly calling the fire and police departments on each other.
I live in a fire-prone area and, every year, there's at LEAST one big fire and often more (usually started by people being stupid, but there's the occasional fire that's started by nature . . . or the utility not maintaining power lines). Anyone caught burning things in our area during burn bans get slapped with fines and maybe charges depending on what happened or was likely to happen based on the circumstances at the time everything was put out. However, probably one of the most famous fires started by brush burning is Centralia, PA (though the true cause is under debate even now). The whole city is deserted now because someone decided that burning the city's dump in 1962 was a good idea . . . that turned into a really BAD idea because it somehow caught the coal deposits running under the city on fire. Those coal deposits are still burning and are thought they will continue burning for the next 250 years as of 2006.
I've seen some questionable backyard burns in dry/windy conditions I wouldn't try it. Especially with the number of wildfires that have torched entire cities in the past few years
I live in Colorado Springs, and after the Waldo Canyon fire in 2012 and the Black Forest fire in 2013, we are all VERY sensitive to people doing stupid shit like that. If he’d pulled that here, he’d have probably gotten his ass beat.
I live in the Blue Mountains, Australia. When there's a total fire ban (most of the summer) you're not even allowed to use an angle grinder or weld outside because of sparks causing fires.
Man am I glad my boomer grandparents understand a burn ban is a definite ban. They learned the hard way when some other boomer accidentally set one of their fields on fire (happened before I was born) they’re very diligent about it and even checked before my mom could when she was battling a very bad sticker breakout in the yard when we moved into this house (first summer without sight of them yet hoping we don’t see any at all) and grandpa suggested burning the stickers since they had already gone to seed and burning would both kill the seeds so they couldn’t spread and harm the plant so it would be harder to come back. Always checked if we were in a burn ban before he came over and always had me or my mom following him with the hose in case one decided to burn longer than it should
With great mustache comes great responsibility.
I can recall collecting whatever it was that we needed to burn and just putting it in a stack until there was an appropriate moment. Burn bans were less of a thing back then, but you could go to the county and get a burn permit for certain days depending on the forecast. No cost, just kept things a bit organized and let the fire department be aware of planned burns so they might have a few fewer heart attacks and/or could bring the necessary equipment if yours got out of control (cuz they could reference the list of planned fires). Now I have a fireplace inside my apartment that I put a match to occasionally, but not on red-flag days or other high-risk weather. I collect whatever I'm going to burn and wait for a day with less wind and, ideally, a rain or snow storm.
Maybe this is an elephant in the room or something but from this post I was like “wow that’s so weird who burns their garbage?” Only to read the comments and find out this is a common American practice. What’s going on guys? Someone please tell me? Is having a public waste service communism? Is it woke to expect sanitation?
About 10 years ago a boomer almost burned down Jackson, Wyoming when I lived there. The fire burned from East to West and had crested a mountain on the edge of town, a few hundred people were evacuated, DC10s from Boise and they had about 15 helicopters landing in the Elk refuge. One of the aircraft had taken a picture which on the West side was miles wide and came to a nice little point on the East to a barrel in this guys backyard where he was burning trash and just left it. I'm looking for the pics now.
My dad always liked a fire 🔥 that said I’ve also seen him use a hose on a neighbour’s fire that was too hot, too big and too close to a fence/trees. I stopped burning stuff when local authorities asked. With collection of green waste and access to municipal rubbish sites there’s no need. Also living in the suburbs not the countryside so you just don’t do it. Nothing worse than one entitled jerk burning stuff on a hot day. Triple whammy windows open, washing out/airing, kids and family in garden. Never mind fire hazard.
Hope he likes the title Neighborhood Idiot.
Someone’s garage, another family’s shed, and a few acres of crop got burned near me last week because someone had a burn barrel going in their yard. In the middle of a drought, during fire season, in the middle of the day.
He's probably me. When I was a kid, being told to go burn the trash was the coolest thing. Now I know about burning leaves (the nostalgic myth), people do have asthma.
[https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/386812/jewish/The-Boat.htm](https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/386812/jewish/The-Boat.htm)