I heard some loud bangs while I was working on a project in my workshop at about 9:30 p.m. I walked outside to investigate and saw a kid panicking because their firework had started the super dry grass on fire, two houses over. It was spreading fast, and it was way too long before they could find a 5 gallon bucket to try and fight it. I sprinted for my phone, dialed 911, and gave the location / details to the dispatch operator. Then I grabbed a hose from the front of the house and hooked it up in back to spray down as much of the dry weeds as possible. Someone knocked on my immediate neighbor’s door and alerted him to the fire that had spread to his yard, whereon he joined in the fight with his own garden hose.

We had stopped it on one front, but the fire kept spreading closer to the back fence, which soon lit up. In the next yard over were stacks of old lumber and lots of collected junk, which started giving off serious heat when it caught fire. Two large trees and the power pole that feeds 6 houses were also seriously damaged. This morning the utility company had already replaced the entire pole and restored power to our 6 houses.

The firefighting crews were already battling another grass fire on the other end of town when this one started. When I first walked out of the door of the workshop, I could already hear the sirens from the other site.