Life Experiences

Probably most of us have never been inside a burning building and likely won’t be. Now I have been. Last week, Neighbor had a fire. I saw it from our place, which is about ¾ mile by crow, as I started out on a trip into town. I headed over to see what was up, and when I got there, their travel trailer was on fire, the children were in tears, and Momma was very upset. No one else was around.

The travel trailer was parked up tight against the barn, which is – was – a very fine, metal truss, insulated, large building with a concrete floor, less than 5 years old. Actually, hardly a barn at all, more like a professional shop building, and larger than most of those. It would likely hold three of our modest pole barns. While we watched, the flames quickly totally engulfed the travel trailer and shot up higher than the roof of the barn, jeopardizing the power lines just above it.

Out here in the country, the fire departments are all volunteer, meaning that the firemen are off somewhere else, and have to drop what they are doing in order to rush to the firehouse first, and then to the fire. They acknowledge that all they can do is to keep a rural fire like this one from spreading out into the fields and woods. It took them 45 minutes to get the first truck to the fire, I checked the time myself.

Meantime, the 30 foot flames wafted back and forth in the breeze, and finally got the roof edge on the barn hot enough to ignite as we watched. Neighbor asked, via phone with his wife, if we could get the tractors out of the barn. Since the flames had just jumped to the barn, I decided to go on in and see what I could do.

I entered through a man-door; the overhead garage doors would not open, even from the inside. I saw that there were two shiny John Deere tractors and a Gator 4x4 in there. When I talk with Neighbor, he’s usually on the Gator with his toddler son, out checking the cows.

Initially, the flames were just starting up from the corner of the ceiling; they were shooting sideways and advancing rapidly across the plastic covering on the ceiling insulation. I went to the larger tractor, a beautiful, brand-new appearing, open top tractor with a front loader, and I got on and started it, intending to use the loader to push down the door, and then to drive the tractor over it and away from the blaze. But starting it was the last success I had.

My tractor experience is limited to my 40 year old John Deere, and the new ones resemble my old one in color only. There were all sorts of levers on the right and left of the operator seat, and I grabbed the nearest one on the right, which made the front loader go up and down. The next one didn’t do anything. Meantime the flames were consuming the ceiling above me, shooting sideways over my head as they ate up the insulation covering. Black smoke filled the upper half of the air space, and was expanding downward rapidly. I could not get the tractor to move. Within seconds I had to abandon the effort; I knew that the smoke was toxic, being burning plastic, and that I would have trouble finding the man-door through the smoke if I waited any longer. So I bailed. Within seconds the flames had consumed half of the ceiling, and the smoke was just above my head as I got out. When I opened the man-door, air rushed in to satisfy the flames. I hoped that shutting the door might starve the flames and limit the damage to just smoke damage.

The resulting fire warped the metal roof to look like a wet fabric draped across the trusses. The tractors largely melted down, they are largely plastic these days. It was a total loss.

The insurance adjusters tried to blame the fire on some sort of circuit breaker issue. That is false. I saw the barn fire start. The origin of the fire was the refrigerator in the travel trailer. Neighbor and family were preparing to go on a trip, and Daughter had first cooled the fridge with the electric option, and then had converted to propane flame about an hour before the fire was discovered and I got there. The initial trailer fire, as I can attest, was in the exact location of the fridge.

It was, well, interesting. While I feel badly for Neighbor and family, it is not a disaster. They are working folk, and responsible. They have insurance. And I will help them get the facts straight with the insurance folks.