I'm writing this really fast in hopes of compensating for the speed of Blogger this morning.

Just kidding (for those who don't know me any better).

Well, last night - July 4 - was a little bit exciting. I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 earlier in the day and didn't see a single thing that surprised me in the least about Bush. He's just exactly the weasel I imagined him to be from the day he announced his candidacy for president of this country that he doesn't belong in. The one thing that did surprise me was just how tight the Bush's are with the Saudis.

But that has nothing to do with the Computer Circus. Neither does the rest of this post, but then there are things that are more interesting than computers. Like fireworks for instance.

I just wonder if kids these days are getting more and more stupid, or if they were always this stupid, but I don't remember being quite so stupid when I was a kid. You see, I live with my wife and a roommate in a huge apartment on a hill. This hill is covered with grass and is usually very windy. This time of year, the grass is no longer green, and it makes great kindling, because it burns so easily.

Key word here: BURNS!

Funny thing about July 4 - people (mostly kids) like to shoot off fireworks. In order to shoot off fireworks, one needs a match or a lighter. This is because they are filled with highly flammable substances that are DESIGNED to burn quickly to either launch a stick of fire into the sky, or to make a loud BANG by making it hard for the fire to get out.

Key word here: FIRE!

Fire and dead grass mix very well...just not in a desireable way when you happen to live right next to the dead grass.

My wife and I decided not to go out for the evening and just spend a quiet night at home. I suppose that was a good thing, because it wasn't so quiet, and had I not been home, we may not have had a home to come back home to. We were watching the Twilight Zone, and there was this big balloon that the characters were shooting at, that looked like a big alien, but was actually constructed by these tiny little aliens that were trying to scare the humans. One guy shot at the balloon and it deflated and the little aliens got scared and took off. About that time, there was a very loud BANG near the apartment, followed by a series of smaller pops in the same vicinity.

I am always fire-conscious (or fire-fearful), living on this grassy hill, so I decided this event warranted an examination. I stepped out on the balcony and saw what I didn't expect to see, but feared most: two patches of flames eating at the dead grass on the hill behind the apartment building!

Here is a shot of the burned patch as of this morning, taken from the perspective from where I first saw it burning last night (the potted plants are on the balcony ledge).

It wasn't a big fire (partly because of my efforts to battle it). But you can see how close it was to the apartment building, and imagine how much worse it could have been:


I grabbed my fire extinguisher from the kitchen and ran out as my wife called 911. My roommate was yelling from downstairs - she basically had a ring-side view of the emerging blaze - but I already had one foot out the door.

It's funny how the mind works in a hightened state of excitement. Or doesn't work. My wife was yelling for me to grab some blankets to throw down, but I just imagined them lighting up, and I didn't think I had time to go downstairs, find some blankets, go back upstairs, run around to the back of the apartment building, and battle the fire. I had a fire extinguisher in hand, so I just ran. I remember thinking how badly I wanted a shovel, and how we got rid of all our yard tools when we moved out to California, thinking we wouldn't need them.

Anyway, the extinguisher still had the mounting bracket strapped to it (it was not actually mounted on the wall - it USED to be mounted on my workbench when I lived in Arizona). I popped the bracket off of it on my way out (I found it this morning right where I tossed it last night - in the middle of the garage).

This sequence of images show part of the route I had to take to get to the back of the building.


What you don't see is my exit route out of the apartment, out of the garage to the street and around the corner to the apartment building next door. What you do see is the stairs at the apartment building next door that I had to descend to get to a termite-eaten gate that led out to the grassy hill. I then had to traverse the uneven terrain in my tennis shoes to get to the fire.

As I approached the fire, I began to fumble with the extinguisher. Humans have a great capacity to project the future - or at least, a hundred possible futures based on emerging situations. By this time, I already imagined myself sitting in some shelter somewhere, holding a blanket around me, thinking about how I lost everything I ever owned to the great fire of July 4, 2004. So, my mind was not exactly focused on the fire extinguisher and how it worked. I just wanted the fire out.

In an emerging situation such as a fire, people tend to get a little excited - perhaps even panicky - and nobody thinks there is time to think. Thus, people react. The trick is to balance reaction with thought, so there is some purpose to what you are doing. I took a moment to pause, and I realized there is time to think. Lots of time, if you just slow down. I managed to remove the locking pin from the nozzle and situated the handle in my hand properly and found the lever to operate the extinguisher. I had never actually used one before.

The rest seemed easy. This magic tank was spitting on the fire line and squelching the flames on contact. There were three or four other (younger) guys on the hill, running up and down, bringing buckets and ice chests to dump water on the fire. They were yelling, "oh shit!", and I had to wonder if these were the kids responsible for the blaze. One of them slipped and fell and rolled over the fire line into the blackend area. By this time, the two small rings of fire had joined to become one larger ring.

I decided to fight the uphill fire line, since that was the line that posed the most danger in my mind. It was the line that was heading toward the apartment building. I can remember maybe a handful of days since I have lived up here, when there was little or no wind on the hill. It was just fate that this just HAPPENED to be one of those nights! Had the wind been blowing, this thing might have gotten out of hand very quickly.

I was doing OK with the blaze, trying to remain calm, when I suddenly found myself in a billow of smoke. I didn't take a deep breath, but I breathed enough to spur me to move away from the fire line. At that time, one of the kids asked me if I wanted him to do it, and before I could answer, he grabbed the extinguisher from my hand and went at it. I was using the extinguisher sparingly. Since it was small, I was using just enough to get the fire under control. But this kid took it from me, and within seconds, it was spent.

I was a little pissed.

So I started stamping the fire out with my feet. Not the smartest thing, but I was being careful, and the fire was small (and getting closer to being under control), and I just worked my way around the edge, stomping out small flames at a time, looking back occasionally to stamp out places where it flared up again. Although the grass was dry, the wind was calm, and the fire was not spreading very fast, so I made sure I thought about what I was doing. The other kids were still hyped up and excited and fumbling, spilling buckets, etc. It seemed to me that I did more toward putting the fire out than they did.

Just as I got around to stamping out the last bit of flame, the kids were already disappearing. This kind of makes me think they were...shall we say...hiding. I can't prove that they started the blaze, but, well, you know, it's not THAT hard to put two and two together. I can't prove it, so one of the hundred probabilities here is that I could be wrong.

The fire was out, but I knew it could flare up again at any time, so I made my way back to the front to see if the fire engine had arrived, yet. It was pulling up just as I got out there. To make a long story short, they had a hell of a time finding a way to get to the back of the apartment, and they had no way to get water there!

The fire started up again, but a fire fighter had finally made his way to the hill and was able to put it out with a shovel. Eventually, three of them started making a fire break around the perimeter. They were talking about how it was such a slow night for July 4.

Lucky me.

They finally were able to link together some garden hoses from a spicket near the front of the apartment building next door (on the other side) of my building and finally were able to wet down the area.

That's scary.

To think that the fire fighters couldn't get water to the hill behind the building - even from the street further down the hill. And to think this termite-laden structure is made of match sticks, nestled in a blanket of kindling, does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Look at the building from the fire's perspective:


Where do you think it wanted to go? There's not much room between the fire line and the pile of driftwood I live in:


It was interesting to examine the area this morning. Here are a few things I found:


There is what looks like the handle of a cap gun. I'm surprised the fire crew didn't pick that up last night (maybe it was just too dark). I know that didn't start the fire, but it is discomforting to know that other potential fire sources were in the hands of kids in this same region at some point.

There's also a trash pail that I can only assume was being used by the other kids last night for transporting water to douse the flames. There is a pile of green, melted, something next to the pail. One can only guess what that is.

Then there is this black plastic pipe. I remember stepping on the end of it, trying to put it out, but it wouldn't stop burning, so I left it (it was already in the blackened area, so I figured it was not any real threat at the time). Who knows what the hell is or was inside of it. It's right about where I saw one of the first rings of fire emerge. What is interesting here, too, is the small branch that is under the pipe that is not burnt. I guess the fire wasn't hot enough to light it up.

Fortunately, it was a small fire and nobody got hurt and no property was destroyed. I just wish people weren't so STUPID! The cops asked me last night if I was lighting firecrackers. I just said "no, I don't have any," when I really was biting my tongue and wanted to say, "no, I'm not that stupid." I haven't been that stupid since October 14, 1980, when I put myself into the hospital for three days when I gave myself this little trophy:

But that's a story for another time.

What amazes me is that there is simply no (easy) way to get water to the rear of this building. I think a call to the owners may change that. Anyway, the apartment building still stands, and my web server keeps running, and I have a place to rest my head (still), so the Computer Circus can continue. As I am sure it will.

If you keep the fire burning, just make sure you keep it under control.