Morning Wildfire

Always double check what you have done because it could end up as a horrible result.

On April 20, 2020 at 11:27 am, my family had a forest fire at our house on Cobbossee Lake. The night before the incident happened by dad was burning brush because he was cleaning up our beach. Before he went to bed that night he checked the fire to see if it was out. That day it was very dry out because it hadn’t rained in a long time. He didn’t hose the brush pile down with water because there was no fire going so he thought it would be okay. The next morning he left to go pick up our golfcart that was being fixed in Winthrop with our neighbors. Before he left he checked the brush pile again, still no remains of it being on fire or any sparks. Around 11:30 am on April 20, my dad called me while I was sleeping and he tells me that the camp is on fire. When he said that I thought he meant the neighbors camp was on fire. My dad then tells me to go outside and update him on what the fire looks like and how it is progressing. When I got outside, it was a lot worse than I thought it was going to be. We have our new dock that was sitting on our lawn but half of that caught on fire. The fire spread to go up a tree. It spread across the lawn and caught a canoe on fire. Which was black smoke because of the fiber glass. The fire spread into our neighbors woods, and almost caught their boat house on fire. There was a tree that was rotted and fell down from a while ago that caught on fire.I facetimed my dad to show him where the fire spread but facetime did not do any justice. I kept running back from each end of the fire to put water on it to make sure it wouldn’t spread. My dad told me to call 911 because he wouldn’t be home for at least another 10 minutes. I called 911 and they sent a firetruck to us but it took a little bit. My dad and the neighbors got back from picking up the golfcart before the firetrucks got there. When they got home, everyone as running around with their heads chopped off. There were at least 5 firetrucks there and a truck that just had water in it for the hoses. All the adults and firemen were running around. My dad was running back from shore to get water with a bucket, back to the fire. Our neighbors and other neighbors brought their hosse over to help. Everyone from our road (we live on a private road) were parked and watching the chaos happen. It took about an hour before they covered the ground with the hose.

The fire spread underground and when it hit above ground; it spread very rapidly because the ground and trees were so dry. What my dad didn’t know is that you need a permit to burn brush. They let my dad off with a warning but they said if it happened again with no permit then there would be consequences. A good outcome that came from this was that we get to cut down a lot of the trees near the shoreline because a lot of them are dead now. The only actual damage that we took was the dock that was brand new.

Always double check yourself no matter what. Always trust your gut and make sure of yourself. Unexpected outcomes could be good or bad, but in this situation it ended up being bad.

Photo on Foter.com