My fiery weekend

[hot_pastrami]

Well, I know that a shovel is the better tool, but in these circumstances it wouldn't have worked really well. The brush, we had almost cleared all of that out already before the fire, so there was little enough fuel that it was not too hard to extinguish with the hose. The hard part was a huge line of evergreen bushes... they were a little dry due to drought conditions, plus this type of bush is full of flammable pitch, so they went up fast. And because the bushes are large and up against one another, there was no way to dig a ditch to stop the fire's progress... and because they're up off the ground a little, throwing dirt on them is ineffective. A lot was working against us.

One good thing is that we hated those bushes anyway, and had planned to remove them from day one, so now part of that job is done for us. We've only been in the place about two months, and this was a hell of a house-warming present.