For
spirit week leading up to homecoming there was a traditional bonfire
that I was put in charge of. I was supposed to round up a huge pile
of wood and put it in the empty field across the street from the high
school. I went to an orchard and got a load of wood that filled up
the biggest trailer I could find and went back and unloaded it into
an unimpressive pile on the ground. Well, crap, that took a long time
for not much to show for it. That is not how I roll. I made some
calls to some local lumber companies and to a company that built
trusses and a couple agreed to drop us a semi trailer load of scrap.
Two semi loads looked better but the best looking was a whole load of
pallets. They were easy to stack and looked like a whole lot of wood
for not much effort. A few helpers and I went over and stacked the
pallets first into a tower and then laid all of the other wood on and
around it into a pile that was about 30' at the base and about 14'
tall. I thought that was pretty impressive indeed. I even thought
that because the pallets provided a natural chimney the fire would be
easy to get going. That was true it was very easy. The day leading up
to the bonfire the vice principal got on the announcements and
reminded everyone of some really awesome things that they should not
do. He announced that he wanted us all to be safe at the bonfire and
then went in to specific unsafe things that we shouldn't do: Do not
bring firecrackers to throw in the fire, do not bring glass bottles
filled with gasoline to throw in the fire, do not bring cans of paint
or WD-40 to throw into the fire. . . He literally said all of that
and more giving plenty of specific advice many had never even thought
of.
 |
| What none of us suspected was that this bad boy right here and a gajillion of his friends where the ones that were going to ruin the bonfire. |
That
night when all was ready I poured five gallons of diesel fuel on the
fire and waited impatiently for the seven o'clock start time. A few
minutes early I lit the fire thinking that it would need some time to
get going. That was not even remotely the case. The diesel caught
fire and burned slowly and smokey making me worry this may need a
helping hand to get going. About a minute in while I was wondering
how to get this thing going while the early crowd was growing
restless the fire started and flames started to snake out of one
piece, then several, then all of the wood. The natural draft that the
pallets provided started drawin in air at an unbelievable rate so
that there was a gentle breeze I could feel feeding the fire at it
grew to be 20, 30 and then nearly a hundred feet tall. In two minutes
it was an immense pillar of fire so hot that students who parked
their cars a hundred feet away had to move them because the heat was
so intense. When the fir e was first taking there were some hoots of
excitement but the spectacle was too great and terrible to do
anything be walk backwards from in awe as you shielded your face from
the scorching heat. At five minutes the fuel started to give out and
the fire started to die down. By ten minutes it was mainly just
smoldering coals that were still very hot but not very fun to stand
by. The bonfire had been scheduled to last for two hours and I had
built a fire that burned itself out in less than twenty. My mistake
was the pallets, they allowed for too fast a reaction and too
efficient a burn and what I should have been looking for a some nice
slow burning natural wood. After the initial shocked awe of the
massive fire column people started complaining about how fast the
fire went out and saying how much this sucked and how whoever made
the fire should have gotten more wood. I tried to explain to anyone
that would listen that there had been plenty of wood it was the burn
rate that was the problem. No one cares about a post fire physics
debriefing when they were expecting a nice leisurely make-out-able
and marshmallow roasting fire. The people who were really mad were
the ones who came at 7:20 and didn't see anything but coals. I was
frustrated with the situation and the fact that these complaining
idiots did nothing to help be were complaining about their free
entertainment not being good enough. I stayed for the full two hours
and then the fir department put the little remaining soot out cold
and I went home more knowledgeable about bonfire dynamics,
information I have never had the need to use again.
