Fires

Today, one of the computers at my office caught on fire. Fortunately, someone unplugged it while it was still in the spark and sizzle phase, and no damage was done - except to the monitor, of course, which is toast. Literally.

On the way home from work, we saw smoke rising from an area a few blocks from our house. Terry diverted to see what was going on, and we saw a garage or outbuilding fully involved, as they say. We didn't linger, knowing the fire trucks were surely on their way. We drove back by later. The house had some damage, but it appeared to be mostly superficial.

All of the fire talk reminded me of what we saw on our trip. As I mentioned in January, Texas and Oklahoma have been smacked with wildfires for months. On our way to Turner Falls, we saw a area that had been burned, and stopped to take pictures. It still smelled smoky, so it had obviously happened recently. I took some pictures, including this one.


I'm assuming that is yucca, but if Aser or someone has another idea, I would be happy to hear it.

Anyway, we saw some locals at the overlook to the falls, and they told us the fire had happened a few days earlier. It gave me all of these poetic thoughts about nature's fury and whatever. Then when I got home, I did some research to find out about the fire.

It turns out that Oklahoma had rain recently, and they had lifted the burn bans that had been in effect this winter. The most recent fires were caused by people burning the trash they had accumulated during the ban. That would explain some of the random garbage I saw when I was taking the pictures. Indeed, if you take a close look at the picture above, you will see there is a Bud Dry bottle to the upper right.

Like my brother says, people are dumbasses.

Meanwhile, in order to tell the tale of fires that come in threes, I have, as we say in the news biz, buried the lead, or at least placed a lovely picture below the fold. Before we got to Turner Falls, we stopped at a park in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where the tulips were in bloom.