How would they ever determine it was your cigarette that did it, beyond a reasonable doubt?

Holy shiat, that actually can happen? Wow, don't I feel like an asshole?

Listen up smokers: The planet is not your ashtray. Don't stick your butt where it doesn't belong. Fire crotch may result.

Well, if they hadn't banned smoking indoors, this wouldn't have happened.

/"Durr, smoker's rights!1"
//*COUGHCOUGHHACKCOUGH*
///Walk the hell away from the bus stop, you cancer sucking retards

The only reason things like this are possible is due to the poor management of the fire-prone areas. Preventing the natural burn cycle without replacing it through logging only creates a build-up of the stuff that burns... resulting in the tinderbox-like conditions so many western forests are in.

As a smoker, I cannot stress this enough: Use a self-extinguishing ashtray and for the love of fark, please don't dump your butts anywhere but a trashcan. Don't make us look worse than smoking already does. It is not that hard to do!

can someone explain how they find out who's cig it was? i mean i read the article, and its the two guys sharin a joint, but does it explain how they found it to be theres? i missed something?

jgowdy138: can someone explain how they find out who's cig it was? i mean i read the article, and its the two guys sharin a joint, but does it explain how they found it to be theres? out it belonged to them? i missed something?

A few years ago we had one of the hottest, driest summers on record. Hadn't rained for weeks. The entire state was under a fire ban. So my neighbors say to themselves, "Tra-la-la-la-lally, what a beautiful day for burning trash illegally in our tinder-dry backyard right next to the overgrown field!"

Yes, they did have to pay back the fire department.

OK before I read the article... the headline just made me laugh out loud and go "REALLY??? AWESOME!!" alone in my home with only my dog to look at me like I'm an idiot. Off to RTFA now and form a real opinion.

OwnTheRide: The only reason things like this are possible is due to the poor management of the fire-prone areas. Preventing the natural burn cycle without replacing it through logging only creates a build-up of the stuff that burns... resulting in the tinderbox-like conditions so many western forests are in.

Logging is a poor solution to our mismanagement of fire for the last century. Unless we start logging all the slash. It's not so much the big timber as the underbrush in the forest that needs to burn off. It's those latter fuels that trigger the raging fires that burn thousands of acres. The forest took care of itself long before we were here. Too bad our hands our tied now because we can't just let it burn. Too many people went and built homes in and around them.

make that ladder not latter.


/durrrrrr...

OwnTheRide: The only reason things like this are possible is due to the poor management of the fire-prone areas. Preventing the natural burn cycle without replacing it through logging only creates a build-up of the stuff that burns... resulting in the tinderbox-like conditions so many western forests are in.

Loggers don't take the dry tinder, dead trees, and underbrush that accounts for the rapid spread of forest fires, they take the healthy trees that burn rather poorly and frequently tend to be the only thing left to dispense the seeds that help forests recover after a fire. I guess what I'm saying here is that logging doesn't replace the natural fire cycle... were it actually to be the case, I would support more (selective) logging to help with the problem.

Right. Now I've read the article and it seems to me that these two gents were sharing a joint on someone's patio. Article doesn't give us enough detail, but I'm guessing since the case was settled out of court that the whole blaze was traced to their joint. I used to smoke cigarettes, and I always took care to put out smoking materials in a soda can or bottle, or else crush them completely out in an ashtray. As The Shatner Incident says... It's not that hard to do....

(also funny when your nonsmoking car-mate picks up the soda bottle and takes a drink) >:D

firefly212: OwnTheRide: The only reason things like this are possible is due to the poor management of the fire-prone areas. Preventing the natural burn cycle without replacing it through logging only creates a build-up of the stuff that burns... resulting in the tinderbox-like conditions so many western forests are in.

Loggers don't take the dry tinder, dead trees, and underbrush that accounts for the rapid spread of forest fires, they take the healthy trees that burn rather poorly and frequently tend to be the only thing left to dispense the seeds that help forests recover after a fire. I guess what I'm saying here is that logging doesn't replace the natural fire cycle... were it actually to be the case, I would support more (selective) logging to help with the problem.

I don't know a lot about the area, since I live a bit east in wetter forests (mostly)... But I do have a friend whose folks live in Colorado and have a cabin in NM, and they are VERY conscientious about clearing out the undergrowth every fall, they hire all the local youngsters and draft the visiting friends & family to help clear out the explosive stuff that can cause a forest fire if a spark flies off the chimney... it seems to me that it only makes sense! They own a home in the forest and stand to lose bucketloads of stuff and memories if it goes up in smoke... why shouldn't homeowners be held liable to clear the underbrush away? No need to clear log the place, just clean the bloody garbage up!

deadsanta: How would they ever determine it was your cigarette that did it, beyond a reasonable doubt?

Attention smokers. If your butt starts a fire, you can be tracked via DNA
Clicked 660 times; posted to Geek on Wed, 15 Nov 2006 at 10:56 AM

lordargent: deadsanta: How would they ever determine it was your cigarette that did it, beyond a reasonable doubt?

Attention smokers. If your butt starts a fire, you can be tracked via DNA
Clicked 660 times; posted to Geek on Wed, 15 Nov 2006 at 10:56 AM


the link takes you to the thread which reads:
Bloginspanken Quote 2006-11-15 11:02:11 AM
RTFA. It's an arsonist and not some guy tossing his butt out the window.

jgowdy138: the link takes you to the thread which reads:
Bloginspanken Quote 2006-11-15 11:02:11 AM
RTFA. It's an arsonist and not some guy tossing his butt out the window.

I know this gets said on fark way too much, but.

RTFA

"DNA extracted from cigarette butts found after the June fires was matched to Oyler"

They caught the arsonist, in part, due to DNA found on the cigarette butts (he used butts and matches to make his arson devices).

/I guess buts don't get totally consumed at the point of origin, the fire probably isn't intense enough there, and spreads outward before the butts are totally destroyed.

firefly212: OwnTheRide: The only reason things like this are possible is due to the poor management of the fire-prone areas. Preventing the natural burn cycle without replacing it through logging only creates a build-up of the stuff that burns... resulting in the tinderbox-like conditions so many western forests are in.

Loggers don't take the dry tinder, dead trees, and underbrush that accounts for the rapid spread of forest fires, they take the healthy trees that burn rather poorly and frequently tend to be the only thing left to dispense the seeds that help forests recover after a fire. I guess what I'm saying here is that logging doesn't replace the natural fire cycle... were it actually to be the case, I would support more (selective) logging to help with the problem.


The dry underbrush does make fires. For all of about an hour as it blows through. Your live healthy 100 ft. trees continue to let it burn for days.

Nocens: The dry underbrush does make fires. For all of about an hour as it blows through. Your live healthy 100 ft. trees continue to let it burn for days.

You haven't seen a forest fire until you've seen a eucalyptus forest fire.

/trees full of volatile oils

They ignited cotton fluff in the air when they handed the cigarette off? WTF?

rmoody: Well, if they hadn't banned smoking indoors, this wouldn't have happened.

/"Durr, smoker's rights!1"
//*COUGHCOUGHHACKCOUGH*
///Walk the hell away from the bus stop, you cancer sucking retards

Agree with the slashies, sarcasm and all, but FAIL on the first -- the indoor smoking ban didn't come about 'til 2006.

/some bar owner told me the courts had struck it down
//Google search suggests otherwise

This man needs an attorney


/Link it like its stolen

smoking aint the only thang that kan kill you....true.

Llois: firefly212: OwnTheRide: The only reason things like this are possible is due to the poor management of the fire-prone areas. Preventing the natural burn cycle without replacing it through logging only creates a build-up of the stuff that burns... resulting in the tinderbox-like conditions so many western forests are in.

Loggers don't take the dry tinder, dead trees, and underbrush that accounts for the rapid spread of forest fires, they take the healthy trees that burn rather poorly and frequently tend to be the only thing left to dispense the seeds that help forests recover after a fire. I guess what I'm saying here is that logging doesn't replace the natural fire cycle... were it actually to be the case, I would support more (selective) logging to help with the problem.

I don't know a lot about the area, since I live a bit east in wetter forests (mostly)... But I do have a friend whose folks live in Colorado and have a cabin in NM, and they are VERY conscientious about clearing out the undergrowth every fall, they hire all the local youngsters and draft the visiting friends & family to help clear out the explosive stuff that can cause a forest fire if a spark flies off the chimney... it seems to me that it only makes sense! They own a home in the forest and stand to lose bucketloads of stuff and memories if it goes up in smoke... why shouldn't homeowners be held liable to clear the underbrush away? No need to clear log the place, just clean the bloody garbage up!

Problem there is some idiot enviro-nut will say you're disturbing the environment. The same enviro-nuts that have the lovely house in the middle of the forest! There is, though, a way to limit fire problems with anything (even sparks caused from dangling metal. Common here): build/set concrete freeway dividers on the roads. If the smoker drops the butt out (which can happen), then the divider would stop it. Only way to then get a fire going from a cigarette is to throw it.
Link (new window)

120 acres? Amateur. I started a wildfire that burned more than 5,000 acres.

ClicheGuevara07: Holy shiat, that actually can happen? Wow, don't I feel like an asshole?

I still have you Farkied as "thinks littering is a victimless crime" :)

Llois: I don't know a lot about the area, since I live a bit east in wetter forests (mostly)... But I do have a friend whose folks live in Colorado and have a cabin in NM, and they are VERY conscientious about clearing out the undergrowth every fall, they hire all the local youngsters and draft the visiting friends & family to help clear out the explosive stuff that can cause a forest fire if a spark flies off the chimney... it seems to me that it only makes sense! They own a home in the forest and stand to lose bucketloads of stuff and memories if it goes up in smoke... why shouldn't homeowners be held liable to clear the underbrush away? No need to clear log the place, just clean the bloody garbage up!

I dunno much about what goes on out that direction either, but this is why Florida has a prescribed burning program. Some of the habitats here are actually supposed to burn as often as every year, and others up to every decade. But then people move in and FIRE IS SCARY PUT IT OUT PUT IT OUT PUT IT OUT!!! so areas might not have burned for 30, 40, 50 or more years, and we get incidents like the '98 fires. And yet people still won't take responsibility for their houses and clear the underbrush. It was so bad during those fires that now firemen give priority to those who actually did do something to prepare when they have to choose.

Worse than that, these habitats then have time to succeed to hardwood forests, which we're really not supposed to have a lot of in the scrub and pine flatwoods areas, so then the burning is worse, because the plants in regularly burned areas are fire resistant (some of them are really quite fascinating, like pine trees spending years in a "grass stage" then suddenly shooting up to be tall enough to survive a low intensity fire, or the scrub rosemary that makes seed banks that will grow after being exposed to fire, or sand pines which require fire to open their cones since they're sealed by goo), where those in the hardwood forest aren't so much. The animals that live in those areas are quite well adapted too. Gopher tortoises can hang out in their burrows, and 360+ vertebrate species will join them (and that's not counting the inverts), while the more mobile animals run away and try to find a new place to set up shop until they can come back to a burned area.

Unfortunately conditions have to be -just so- for foresters to set a fire since we can't let the fires just run their course, which means we really can't keep up with the need.

/what can we do though? have to live somewhere. . .

The Shatner Incident: As a smoker, I cannot stress this enough: Use a self-extinguishing ashtray and for the love of fark, please don't dump your butts anywhere but a trashcan. Don't make us look worse than smoking already does. It is not that hard to do!

You're clearly not a jerkoff, why not just quit smoking and come all the way over to the light.

phartnocker: The Shatner Incident: As a smoker, I cannot stress this enough: Use a self-extinguishing ashtray and for the love of fark, please don't dump your butts anywhere but a trashcan. Don't make us look worse than smoking already does. It is not that hard to do!

You're clearly not a jerkoff, why not just quit smoking and come all the way over to the light.

Clearly the smokers in this thread are the only jerkoffs.

Forest Service officials alleged the cigarette sparks caught aspen cotton fluff floating in the air on fire and started the blaze.

Seems to me that a farking backyard grill could start a forest fire if that it actually the case. Flammable air?

Interesting that we don't understand that fire is part of the natural cycle of forests. Here in BC we have serious pine beetle troubles because of fire suppression and piss poor management practices. Ponderosa pine forest for example usually has quick burning fires that clean up the fuel not allowing it to build up. Penticton 1994 and Kelowna 2003 were great examples of the effects of suppressing the fires until the fuel built up so much that the fires were so hot and impossible to contain. Ponderosa pine has evolved with fire resistant bark to survive the natural fire cycle.
A good friend of mine is a professional forester he was doing research on Fir and Pine beetle, probing trees and using bait traps to find the infestations. He found that the worst infestations were surrounding old decks of logs left on landings, seems that they are great for providing food and shelter for the beetles. As well our silviculure practices have focused on planting as much pine as possible, as the lodgepole pine is fairly easy to get established and because the licensee has to replant and have the plantation "free to grow" (800 stems per hectare of trees over 2m tall) before they are allowed to harvest adjacent land. So we have set ourselves up for what we are seeing now.
As far as logging helping to clean up the litter it depends on the method and the terrain. A flat to low angled block that is harvested conventionally is usually cleaned up by piling the slash with an excavator and the piles burned in the late fall. The steeper cable yarded blocks are sometimes broadcast burned but not so much anymore.
As far as smoking in a tinder dry forest(jesus, nic fit much), walk to a creek and smoke there. Soak your butt when you're done (cigarette butt that is!) and put the filter in your pocket, voila no fire. Oh, and if you can't find a sane spot to smoke than don't. Also, if you gotta smoke outside and throw your butts on the ground at least smoke filterless, I hate seeing little fiberglass filters in the bush that don't breakdown, littering is poor form.

/bushmonkey, tree planer, brush cutter, 20 years of bush time seen a lot of cut blocks, planted 300,000 seedlings, helped with layout for a couple summers really enjoyed hanging out with the loggers good folks that do dangerous and difficult work.

New Age Redneck: Also, if you gotta smoke outside and throw your butts on the ground at least smoke filterless, I hate seeing little fiberglass filters in the bush that don't breakdown, littering is poor form.

Nat Sherman makes cigarettes with biodegradable flax filters.

Ok, I live in Colorado so I'm getting a kick etc, but what I do want to add is, on the television, it was theorized that "hot bullet fragments" caused the fire.


Both /facepalm at said theory.

/Pic is hot, like bullet fragments
//and my backyard....

phartnocker: The Shatner Incident: As a smoker, I cannot stress this enough: Use a self-extinguishing ashtray and for the love of fark, please don't dump your butts anywhere but a trashcan. Don't make us look worse than smoking already does. It is not that hard to do!

You're clearly not a jerkoff, why not just quit smoking and come all the way over to the light.

I like to smoke, dammit. I like the stress relief. I am orally fixated. I'm not ready to quit yet. I just try not to be a pain in the arse.