Fire!

So the weather was sunny today and a little bit windy. We had a large pile of cuttings (3m in diameter and 2m high) that needed burning, so I stuffed paper into the pile and lit it with my propane torch. I looked over at my neighbour's farm and they were burning as well. I saw that the flames were about 3 metres high and about 10 metres wide, but I couldn't see the base of the fire very well. Then the neighbour was calling me over. I asked him where his fire break was. He said the fire jumped his break and he had no source of water; not good. The fire was about 13 to 20 metres from our property.

I said that I would get our hose but it wouldn't reach the whole fire. Our connected hoses was 45 metres long. I gathered 3 more hoses to make it 90 metres long. This took about 3 minutes and the fire had quickly crossed onto our property! To make a long story shorter, I put out the fire on our property; it was about 4 metres in and about 40 metres long; we had short grass so it didn't spread very much. I put out the fire that was heading towards their house; it was about 10 metres wide and was within 8 metres of their house. The volunteer fire department arrived 5 minutes after connecting our hoses and they put out the rest of the fire; it covered about an acre. Their property is 100 metres wide and the fire covered 80 metres of that width.

The neighbours hadn't managed their farm for a few years, so the grass was very long but not standing up, so this really contributed to the fire spreading. It's funny that some of the fence posts were burning yet the blackberries lining the fence didn't even get singed! So I got to play firefighter for a day! Fortunately, there was no real damage to the neighbour's or our property. Warning, very little water comes out of 90 metres of hose; need way more water pressure!

These pictures were taken the day after: