Column: Recreation

Some of my neighbors -- the ones who know the gory details of the time I almost burned down the neighborhood -- call me Sparky.

The incident happened back in 2007, a bad year for tent caterpillars in these parts. By late summer, the ugly masses of writhing bag worms were forming aplenty in the branches of the elm, hickory, willow and sweet gum trees the caterpillars prefer.

I first noticed the unsightly masses getting bigger by the day along the road into our neighborhood and shortly thereafter in the low-hanging branches of trees along the driveway. Not a pretty sight. Something had to be done.

So one warm Thursday morning, my yardwork included using a pole pruner to trim off the bags I could reach. I clipped a dozen or so and put them in a garbage bag for disposal in the county dumpster.

Sure, I'd seen the signs that said putting yard waste in dumpsters was prohibited. But I had also seen how much heed other homeowners were paying that posting. So in they went, regardless.

Upon returning home, I spotted a couple of bagworms along my driveway that I had missed on the first pass.

"I'll deal with them this weekend," I decided. "I've had enough of worms for today."

And I did. On Saturday morning, I clipped out the two remaining bags. Thinking that I could home-dispose of them faster than making a trip to the dumpster, I got a piece of newspaper and book of matches from the garage, placed the paper on the driveway and the worms on the paper, and lit the corner. The little fire crackled satisfyingly as it flared up around the filmy tents, roasting the writhing worms therein.

"But hey," I suddenly realized. "That burning mess is going to melt the asphalt on the driveway. I'd better push it off the edge, where it won't do any damage."

Once all the worms had been scorched, I dutifully ground the dying flames into the mulch with my shoe. Job complete. Off to the next pursuit.

Three hours later, coming up-river from a Sea-Doo trip to interview the subject of a soon-due "Laker Magazine" story, I spotted a tall, thin plume of smoke rising above the shoreline of my cove. "The next door neighbors must be burning brush," I reasoned.

As I got closer and lined up with the mouth of the cove, I realized the smoke was rising directly over my roof. I squeezed the throttle wide open for the last half-mile or so, roaring into the cove at nearly 60 mph, letting off just in time to avoid a collision with the dock, my momentum sliding the hull hard against the fenders affixed to the floater.

Without even tying up the Sea-Doo, I raced off the dock, shedding my life preserver as I went. Up 25 steps, two at a time, around the garage and -- "Oh, my God!"

Halfway up the driveway, my entire woodpile, probably two cords of mostly oak, was ablaze. Flames were shooting 20 feet into the air, sending out waves of heat that I could feel from 50 feet away. Rivulets of fire were burning their way into the woods that separated our lot from our neighbor's -- little rivers of flame flowing uphill through the underbrush.

Breathless from my sprint uphill from the dock, I threw open the door from the garage to the house.

"Call 911. There's a fire out in front!" I shouted to my wife, Ferne.

Then I dashed out and up the steep driveway, past the fire, going for the garden hose that I had used earlier that morning to water some drought-stressed trees. Unfortunately, I had not used it to make sure my worm residue was thoroughly doused.

That it hadn't rained for a couple of months made it easy for a residual spark to migrate through the dry mulch to the base of the woodpile. From there to inferno was just a matter of minutes.

My garden hose attack was woefully inadequate. With just my thumb to act as a nozzle and water pressure suffering from probably 70 feet of elevation separating the lake pump and stopcock high on the front lawn, I had to get close to spray water on the base of the flames. But the heat was searing the hair on my legs, arms and chest. As soon as I backed away for relief, any parts of the fire that I had quelled burst into leaping flames again.

Seeing the inadequacy of my attack, Ferne had rushed back to the house to fill buckets from the garage faucet and drive them up in the back of the SUV. What remained in the buckets after she'd hurried up the slope had little more effect on the blaze than my feeble hose stream.

The woodpile had been carefully laid L-shaped to block the view of our electrical-service transformer box. Horrified, I realized that should that box be compromised, electricity to our water pumps would cease. With panic-induced stupidity, I directed my hose stream to the metal box, desperate to keep it from melting.

Inside that box, I later learned from an eyes-rolling electrician friend, was more than 3,000 volts that could easily have traveled back along the water stream to me, standing there in water-soaked sneakers with my thumb acting as a nozzle. I was lucky not to get jolted into oblivion.

After what seemed an eternity, I heard sirens in the distance - the response to Ferne's 911 call. Redirected from a wrong turn by a neighbor, a former firefighter who my wife also had called to come and help us fight the blaze, the truck pulled down my driveway and fire guys quickly blanketed the woodpile with foam.

With professionals on the scene, I retreated to the grass across the driveway, collapsed, and turned the meager stream from my water hose on my head and singed limbs.

My heart rate subsided some as the volunteers moved to quench the lines of fire that had crept into the woods. Thankfully, my carelessness would be contained before it reached the home next door.

"Keep an eye on this," a firefighter told me as he was rolling up his hose. "These can sometimes come back to life."

Indeed, I checked for embers once night had fallen, and was up to check again three or four times during the night - no alarm clock necessary.

Learn from another's laker's mistake

This memory resurfaced with a vengeance when I met a fellow firebug at a holiday party last month. After hearing her story, I realized that I, a continuing user of a wood-burning fireplace, had often been guilty of the very mistake that cost her family a lake home and its entire contents.

The recent news report from Stamford, Conn., where a family lost five of its members in a Christmas Day house fire that started from improperly discarded fireplace ashes, was especially poignant for laker Susan Dantonio and her husband, Tony.

On Jan. 13, 2010, the log home they had built years earlier in Beechwood West burned to the ground because of improperly handled "dead" fireplace ashes.

"I cleaned out the fireplace the day after we had a fire, putting the ashes in a metal bucket and placing it outside in the snow that covered our slate patio" (Remember the huge snowfall we had that year?), Susan recounted. "Later in the day, I went outside and, having heard that ashes would promote flower growth come spring, dumped the ashes on some snow-covered bushes near the house."

An hour later, Dantonio heard a "weird noise" outside the window to the patio. "It sounded like someone scratching their fingernails on a window," she recalled. When she went to investigate, she saw flames licking up the side of the house.

"I was stunned. I called 911 and the trucks, fireboats and dozens of volunteer firefighters were on the scene in 20 minutes. But by then the fire was raging. The house couldn't be saved; it was a loss."

Later, Moneta Volunteer Fire Department Chief Jeremiah Calhoun told her that just a tiny kernel of glowing ember can be all it takes to put a house ablaze.

"You'd be surprised how many times we see this same scenario," Calhoun said. "To be safe, you should soak fireplace ashes with water before dumping them."

A lot of trouble? A bit messy?

"You really don't know what trouble and mess are until you deal with the aftermath of a fire in your house," Dantonio said.

By July 2011, the Dantonios had constructed a new log home, raised on the old foundation and with much the same floor plan. They moved in with a temporary county certificate of occupancy and have now completed most of the interior finishing.

"We actually enjoyed our time living in Bridgewater Bay while the structure was being rebuilt," Dantonio said. "Our condo was right on the water; we had our boat there, and we used the tennis court, pool, clubhouse and other amenities. We're keeping the unit as a rental and will likely go back there someday.

"Still," she continued, "losing a home to fire is horrible. I just hope telling this story will save other families from having to endure the same trauma."

Dantonio's words of advice: "Douse those ashes and embers."

Ol' Sparky here has reason to agree.