He Tried to Plug a Wasp Nest. He Ended Up Sparking California's Biggest Wildfire.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

POTTER VALLEY, Calif. — It was a fire that crossed mountain ranges and valleys, that spanned multiple counties and shocked Californians by its sheer scale — by far the biggest wildfire in modern state history. And yet a newly disclosed investigation suggests it was probably started by a single man and a single spark.

In a report released in recent days, forensic investigators found that a rancher started the fire when hammering a metal stake in his backyard to snuff out a wasp nest. Sparks flew, igniting dry grass stalks and spreading fire quickly across the desiccated landscape.

The rancher’s name was not disclosed, but a review of records led to the home of Glenn Kile, a former heavy equipment operator in his mid-50s, who had no inkling of the devastation he would unleash on a Friday morning last July while tinkering in his backyard. Seeing the fire, he said, came as a shock.

“I smelled smoke, I turned around, and there it was,” Mr. Kile said in an interview on the porch of his barn-red, two-story home this week. Mr. Kile, who has not talked publicly about the fire before, referred to it as if it had been an apparition. “There was nothing I could do,” he said.

During a morning of chores on his ranch three hours north of San Francisco, he had spotted an underground wasp nest. He grabbed a metal stake and pounded it into the hole to try to seal it off, according to an investigation by California’s fire agency. He told investigators he was allergic to stings and wanted to plug the hole.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/he-tried-to-plug-a-wasp-nest-he-ended-up-sparking-californias-biggest-wildfire/ar-AACJERq?li=BBnbcA1

Brilliant! Try mint oil next time. It's toxic to wasps but otherwise environmentally safe.

[SpankMe]

1. I'm skeptical of the idea that metal-on-metal sparks can ignite grass

I can't start a fire in my barbecue with dry wood, newspaper and an accelerant, like stream of lighter fluid. I just can't believe that a few errant sparks from metal-on-metal hammer blows can ignite dry grass.

[TheCowsCameHome]

3. I'm very skeptical, too.

This just sounds ridiculous to me.

[Lochloosa]

4. Get one of these and you can eliminate the nasty lighter fluid

Been using one for years. All you need is newspaper

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Weber-Compact-Rapidfire-Chimney-Starter-7447/203609220?cm_mmc=Shopping%7CG%7CBase%7CD28I%7C28-22_BBQ+GRILL%7CNA%7CPLA%7CBrands%7CFixed_WEATHER_TEST%7c71700000050262359%7c58700004927056640%7c92700042729571153&gclid=Cj0KCQjwxYLoBRCxARIsAEf16-vr0jYswdlzmWMnyriRHkCA--1-jrkx05QTg0uLtWYVChC6-rmXXfAaAuYrEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

[Retrograde]

5. High temperatures, months of low humidity

lots of dry grass and brush, especially grass that's been trodden on so there are a lot of small chaff -all you need is a spark that smolders unseen until it flares up when a small breeze hits it.

A very, very old way of starting fires involved striking flints on other flints or metal in the proximity of fine straw or similar tinder.

[NickB79]

8. Fires have been started by bullets hitting rocks

https://news.sky.com/story/sparks-from-bullets-start-grassland-blazes-at-firing-range-11420252

[Mariana]

13. They can.

People have been starting fires with sparks, on purpose, for thousands of years. Fine, dry, dead grass makes for a dandy tinder.

[D2020]

15. I do a lot of metal work

involving hammering on steel and wrought iron, and have never had a spark happen. You can shatter a hammer head hitting a piece of hardened steel, but it still won't create a spark.

[GoCubsGo]

21. Hmmmm... I have lit many a Bunsen burner with one of these.

Metal on metal. They make lots of sparks. Welders use them to ignite their torches every day.

[sl8]

24. That sparker is using ferrocerium.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrocerium

Steel on steel can spark, though. The sparks are little, puny things compared to ferrocerium sparks, but sparks all the same.

[D2020]

28. None of your replies explain this

Meta striking metal spark theory.

[Hekate]

33. I hope by this time you've read the rest of the thread

[GoCubsGo]

20. Humandkind has been lighting fires with dried grass from their beginning.

The first humans hit two hunks of flint rock against each other to cause sparks to light tinder for their fires. They used dried grass as their tinder. It's absolutely possible to start a grass fire with sparks from metal-on-metal, or any other source of sparks. Dozens of grass fires are ignited every year just from the sparks that come out of vehicle tail pipes. It doesn't take much to ignite dry grasses.

If you can't light your dry wood with all that stuff, then your wood isn't dry. Just sayin'.

[wryter2000]

26. You have to know what it's like in California

It rains like mad for months (if we're lucky) between November and March, and the vegetation grows like crazy. Then, everything dries out without a drop of rain for more months. The countryside is filled with dry grasses. One little spark can set them off, and then the flames spread so fast a hillside can burn in a few minutes. Once a resin-filled fir tree goes up in flames, the fire jumps from the top of one tree to another.

It does seem to me that if he'd seen the original flame, he might have stamped it out with his foot, but if he didn't notice it for several seconds, it could have been racing off. By the time he could get a hose...if his hose reached that far on his property...it would be too late to stop it.

[yonder]

27. Loose tow chains inadvertently dragging on the highway can start a wildland fire.

[Hekate]

29. It's metal on rock on an extremely hot extremely dry day, & happens all the time in California

Local fire departments will tell people not to operate machinery in grasslands on days (weeks, months) like that. Heavy equipment, but also Lawn mowers, shovels, cars dragging a tailpipe or fender against the asphalt -- all strike sparks, and all have been known to start wildfires. That's why people who live in rural areas need to do their weed abatement projects before fire season starts.

(The Painted Cave fire of 1990 was initially thought to have been from a cigarette, but if I recall correctly it was finally decided it started from a metal to stone spark. That damn thing traveled from the mountains, jumped roads and freeways, and almost made it to the ocean.)

When I read this article some days ago, I just felt sick for the guy. It was not his fault, but he has to live with knowledge of the devastation.

[emmaverybo]

2. I don't get his remedy. We spray the nests and then remove them. So far wasps gone and no

fire. Would never do this indoors because of our pets. But this is what exterminators do.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. Are you talking about paper wasp nest that look like a grey balloon?

Rancher was describing ground wasp nests.....we have them down here, too.

but...spraying whatever into their hole needs to be done at early night, when they are all in the nest, not during the day when they can attack you.

[emmaverybo]

11. I should have mentioned that. Night. But ours were the hanging kind, nesting on the inside of shed d

doors and in the car trunk. I honestly don’t know what the advised course is for ranchers and when the nests are in holes in the ground.
Thanks for reminding me about the night thing.

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. I have a solution for you, actually.

Wasps are territorial, so they avoid other wasp nests/area.
There is a imitation wasp balloon thing you can buy, hang it in the area you want wasp free, and they will not nest in that area.
You have to use it before wasps arrive, and there are some other good suggestions from customers on this page....

https://www.amazon.com/FMI-Brands-Inc-Non-Toxic-Deterrent/dp/B000W93LUU

You can of course search for other places, and I do remember seeing one that wa more natural color grey, but maybe to wasps, color is not as important as shape.

We used to be bothered by insects flying around our carport, which has a flat ceiling. Turns out, if you paint it with a even light tint of blue-...we got blueish white shade, that looks white to us....flying things don't fly there. It works...
no flies, no garden winged pests for years now.
That might be why people down here in the South paint front doors blue/blueish, to keep flying bugs from getting in when the door is opens.

[emmaverybo]

23. Amazing. Am bookmarking the link. Thank you sooo much. nt

[RandySF]

6. I heard a different story.

The guy was hammering near a fuel line, saw the wasp nest and started hammering in a hurry, thus creating the spark.

[rickford66]

7. I guess he did what I do.

I pour gasoline down the hole and wait 10 -15 minutes for the gas to atomize. Then throw a match at the hole and get a big explosion. Sometimes smoke comes out of the ground yards away depending upon the their tunnels. I may do this a few times. Of course I have a hose ready and soak the surrounding area and fill the hole with water after the wasps are dead. Anyway, he screwed up.

[jeffreyi]

10. You don't have to light the gas

For this to work. The fumes alone will kill the hornets. Assume these were yellow jackets the guy was dealing with.

[rickford66]

14. Good to know, but the explosion is a nice touch.

[D2020]

16. And a lot of fun!

[jeffreyi]

17. So true.

[Hekate]

31. Jesus. If he had done that in California he'd either be crispy-dead or in prison for arson

No one in their right mind would use that method here.

[caraher]

12. Speculators should read the Cal Fire report

From the article:

The Cal Fire report detailed the steps investigators took to analyze the cause. Using magnets and tweezers, they found tiny metal shards near the wasp nest. Any one of them, or all, could have ignited the dry grass. The metal stake was misshapen where it had been hammered.

They were on the scene fairly quickly and looked at many possible causes. The investigator checked for evidence of, and eliminated as possibilities, many causes. The list (which seems to be a checklist investigators work through) includes:

Lightning
Campfire
Smoking
Debris burning
Incendiary (matches, combustible liquids)
Equipment use (motorized)
Vehicle
Railroad
Children
Powerlines
Fireworks
Cutting, Welding & Grinding
Firearms
Blasting
Structures
Glass refraction
Spontaneous combustion
Flares

What's left is that the story the guy told is accurate, and they found physical evidence in support of his story.

[Beartracks]

22. I like how "children" are listed as an independent cause. LOL

If you rule out the other things on the list that children could be using or doing (e.g. fireworks, matches, campfires, glass refraction with a magnifying glass...), it appears children can cause fires just by being there.

===========

[caraher]

25. yeah

Children evidently are just fires waiting to happen!

[Hekate]

32. Children are fascinated by fire. Unsupervised children can and do burn down their own homes...

It's a common enough occurrence that parents are warned over and over not to leave small children unattended. They can drown themselves, wander into traffic, get lost, and play with fire. Their brains are not developed. It's Parenting 101.

[Kaleva]

19. Article doesn't say what happened to the wasps.

[Hekate]

30. We were troubled by wasps before the Thomas Fire; nasty persistant things...

No idea where the nest was, but it had to have been big. Anyhow, courtesy of a devastatingly huge regional wildfire, it was over a year before we saw any again. So I imagine this man's wasps have likely been abated.

[nuxvomica]

34. I use orange oil on sand wasps

Mixed with agar, water and dish soap. Environmentally safe and works well but you have to add the water and dish soap because orange oil is highly flammable. Um, maybe not good to use during a drought, though.