The reason you don't light fireworks during a burn ban.

Told my son yesterday "You can throw snap-pops on our driveway...that's it, nothing else and nowhere else." Mentioned it multiple times.

2 minutes later I hear "DAD!!!" Ran outside to a very rapidly spreading fire. Had the wife run and move the vehicles and get buckets of water and the son call 911 while I got to work using a rake to essentially build a burn boundary in the yard. (This is 1/2 my yard, 1/2 the neighbor's yard.) Fire department showed up in 5 minutes flat and helped to soak the boundary a bit more.

What you see here is about a 100' diameter circle. It took MAYBE 4-5 minutes to spread. We were out there for about another 3 to 4 hours knocking down hot spots and thoroughly soaking the ground. Almost ended up going to the ER but thankfully a) wife is a nurse and b) we had a steroid inhaler on hand to help me deal w/the smoke inhalation.

After I calmed down, I then calmed my son down (he was legit freaking the hell out) and told him "Son...I love you....but right now you need to be anywhere else but around me. We'll talk later."

Right now he's knocking out a list of chores a mile long, amongst MANY other things.

 

Dang! Good work getting after it quickly.

 

1) glad you guys are okay
2) glad you took time to address the issue with your son once you had mellowed
3) glad your fire department responded so quick

Will definitely be a learning experience for you son and I doubt he will ever forget it. Just glad you are all okay.

 

Thanks for posting. Obviously a childhood fuckup but you should be proud he alerted you as fast as he did. Always good to not compound the fuckups.

 

Agreed with all of the above.

What kind of pyrotechnic did he use?

 

Something called a 'Zoomer' - wasn't too clear on the exact specs. It's either one of those that makes a bigger boom than a firecracker, or makes noise and sparks.

I told him later on "You were given three directives. One, stay on the concrete. Two, use ONLY the snaps. Three, use NOTHING else and nowhere else unless and until we say. Failing to follow ANY of those is why this happened....and that almost burnt down 2 houses, 2 vehicles, and sent me to the ER."

It scared the crap out of him and he was absolutely beside himself...but I wasn't pulling any punches with him or showing any sympathy at the time, intentionally. Later on I'll have a bit more of a calm talk - along the lines of "I will ALWAYS love you, son...but sometimes I detest some of the THINGS you do...and this one was a big one, and could have been a LOT worse."

 

Agreed. I did make sure to let him know that as bad as it was, one of the things he did RIGHT was to tell us, and to call 911, ASAP.

 

The funny thing is that I'd watched that last Friday afternoon just before going home the other day. LOL

 

Agreed on all accounts. It scared the living crap out of him.

I tell you what though...I've lost about 50# in the last year or so, and I could seriously tell. Later on when I calmed down I realized I'd been running my butt off for 2 hours fighting the fire, carrying stuff, etc...and I'm only slightly sore today, amazingly.

 

This is a "Dad, how long do I ground myself for?" moment.

 

Glad everyone acted quickly and everything turned out relatively okay.
That said,.....we might be overlooking something.
What did the adults learn from this?
(My kids are grown now, but I would've been the bad guy and limited them to zero combustibles during a fire ban).
Kids do what kids do. Sometimes you have to kill all the fun and let them hate you for minute. Sure, you gotta let them skin their knee, get stung by a bug, burn their hand on the stove before they learn, but this lesson almost cost a lot more than a blister.
Not preachin here. I learned more lessons as a parent than my kids ever learned as kids. Plenty of times I lectured them, but it turned out I screwed up and never should've let them x,y,z.

 

Please tell me your son isn't 47 y/o or something like that. Sounds like you handled it well with some fast action.

 

Yikes....Glad the adults were home and could handle this. Very scary scenario... glad everyone is alright and no really disastrous damage was done. He will remember this forever, and I surmise will forever going forward will be an advocate for fire/fireworks safety. I think almost every boy/girl has some close call growing up. I sure had my share....gun handling, dry ice explosions, etc.

 

It's pretty amazing how quickly a little fire can spread... especially when fuel is dry enough that they've instituted a burn ban.

Even fairly responsible kids are still kids, and will usually get excited and do kid stuff when fireworks are involved.

*Adult supervision*
*Hose or buckets of water at the ready*

Glad it didn't go REALLY badly for ya'... that coulda' been ugly. Are you on the hook for the FD response?

 

Man kids these days will do anything to get out of doing yard work.

 

Scary shit.
Really lucky you guys got it out so fast.
Hopefully he learns his lesson with consequences that were manageable, because not everyone gets that chance.

This one was from a "smoke bomb" out here that will leave a scar on the Columbia River Gorge longer than most of us will be alive. It grew to 3,000 acres literally over night, with 500,000 acres burned in total, and it took a year for it to fully extinguish (root pockets and stumps burned all winter long).
Eagle Creek Fire - Wikipedia

 

All due respect, but this fire wasn't caused by snap pops. Snap pops cannot start a fire.

Glad you guys were able to respond and put it out without anyone getting hurt or damage to property.

 

Kids aren’t the only ones that do stupid stuff with fire. We almost lost property in this fire 20 years ago - it was actually two fires that joined and burned about 500,000 acres. One fire was started by a firefighter reservist wanting to get paid to fight a fire while the other was intentionally started as a signal fire by a woman that broke down on her quad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodeo–Chediski_Fire?wprov=sfti1

 

Hell yes you're preaching...but you're also right. What I learned is what I already knew, really - despite being 14.5 years old, it does not matter - until they're out of your house, you MAKE DAMN sure you know EXACTLY what they're doing at ALL times, and what you say goes, or that's it.

 

I'm not, Thank God. One of the first responders lives literally 2 doors down; and the fire dept is like 2 miles away.

I flat told them "Son started it...but it's my/my neighbors' yard, and I'll be glad to pay whatever fine is needed. He just laughed and said "Nah, we'll chalk it up to monthly training...just make sure he stays the hell away from fireworks." LOL

 

OR he was being unconventional about it. I mean, the grass IS shorter there than it was, so...

"Hey dad I found a new way to cut the grass!"

 

Yeah, my sister sent me a link to that yesterday. O_O Son is over the panic mode, but he's still a little...I dunno, 'haunted' - as in he fully realizes just how badly he f***ed up, and how bad it could have been.

We've had him doing all manner of absolute sh*t work outside today, and he's not complained once.

 

Now you don't have to worry about killing the grass with your moving pods.

 

Ah, the joys of parenting! Happy to hear that damage was negligible.
Sorry to say that I think fireworks should be limited to professional displays only, the amount of damage they cause to people, animals and land is criminal.

 

The irony of the British telling Americans how to celebrate their independence from the British.

 

Yeah, but you lot only have to have the excuse of a satisfying shit and the fireworks come out.

 

Zing! And a

 

You'd better believe it.

 

I've never celebrated a shit with fireworks...never really thought about doing it, but it's on my todo list now.