Text 5594, 49 rader
Skriven 2007-12-01 07:27:46 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
   Kommentar till text 5565 av Ross Cassell (1:123/456)
Ärende: Presidential Candidates.
================================
Replying to a message of Ross Cassell to GERRY FORMAN:

 RC> You seem to think the urban sprawl outclasses the rural.

 RC> I have been around, I have friends in the midwest whom talk about and
 RC> complain about the fact that their neighbors burn yard litter and
 RC> even their own trash.

Mostly, I suspect, because of the fire hazard posed by stubble fields.  About
two
years ago a trash fire got out of hand (why somebody was burning trash on a
very
windy day escapes me) and burned about four sections (including four
farmsteads).
The fire departments were powerless to stop or control it, what finally stopped
it
was neighboring farmers - in come cases coming for miles - who disked a very
wide firebreak in front of it (four tractors working in parallel can disk a
swath
about 200 feet wide in one pass).

Most folks out here have burn barrels (mine just went to a scrap metal dealer;
I'm
more paranoid about open flames than most folks, and my next furnace will be a
geothermal heat pump - no flame).

In 2004 a combine started a fire in the quarter section immediately north of
me.
It got my attention because the 158 acres that surround my place were dry corn
that hadn't yet been harvested and the wind was blowing (slightly) in my
direction.
The Emerson weed wagon got a start on the fire (in a harvested soybean field)
but
it was the fellow across the street who came barrelling up with his tractor and
50' wide (unfolded) disk that did in the fire - I couldn't believe it but he
drove
right through the flames (which weren't very high, about halfway up the back
tires)
two or three times and that fire was OUT, dead and buried, literally.  We were
all
lucky in that the fire was caught before it really got going.  Right after he
finished
the Rural Fire District's water wagon (a semi-tank truck painted fire engine
red and
equipped with red lights and a siren) came charging in from Malvern (12 miles
west).

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)