"I understand, Boris dahling, but Fearless Leader says there is no State Secret he does not know!"
Posted on 06/11/2002 11:47:49 AM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
An unlucky rodent was behind the Lincoln County wildfire that forced more than 300 Pioche residents to evacuate their homes over the weekend.
Investigators Monday found a scorched squirrel near a power line that had shorted out on the outskirts of Pioche, where the fire started Saturday afternoon.
"The squirrel fell on the power line. Apparently they found his little body near the point of origin," said Vicki Stevens, acting assistant Nevada fire marshal. "They're not sure how he got up there."
Fire officials speculated a bird could have dropped the animal on the line, or perhaps the rodent lost its balance, causing the line to short and nearby brush to catch fire.
About half of the town's residents were evacuated from their homes Saturday after winds of up to 60 mph pushed the fire around three sides of Pioche. Residents went to a local park and returned to their homes Sunday morning as winds died down and firefighters gained control of the blaze.
"It burned in some areas within 50 to 100 yards of homes," said Chris Hanefeld, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman.
The fire was 70 percent contained Monday, and authorities said they expected total containment at 6 p.m. today. Monday's low temperatures and light winds slowed the fire's growth, Hanefeld said.
The fire consumed about 940 acres of mostly pinion-juniper and sagebrush and destroyed 10 abandoned buildings and one unoccupied trailer. No one was injured.
BLM officials initially reported a damage area of more than 1,500 acres, but as the fire subsided Monday, officials realized the area was smaller. "When they're burning sometimes they look bigger than they really are," Hanefeld said.
Sunday night, 348 firefighters worked on the blaze, but the BLM on Monday morning sent 70 firefighters home.
About 200 firefighters from several Nevada agencies, including Clark County Fire Department, remained to put out hot spots.
Officials said the incident is not the first time an animal has been at the root of a wildfire. Lizards started the 1997 Autumn Hill fire in Douglas County when two boys dipped the reptiles in lighter fluid and set them on fire.
Pioche residents said Monday they were skeptical that a "flying squirrel" started the fire.
Judith Joseph, owner of Grub Steak Dinner House on Main Street, said she had heard several rumors about what caused the fire. "Well in Pioche, unless you see it, don't believe it."
Natasha, darling! Is more to møøse and sister affairs than you think. Besides, is State Secret.
"I understand, Boris dahling, but Fearless Leader says there is no State Secret he does not know!"
Something like 8000 police departments (and probably a similar number of fire departments) in the United States and you're asserting that all of them have such impeccably uniform training and high procedural standards that they will act equally prompt and correct during power line events? I was once stuck in traffic while a volunteer FD cordoned off a one block area because of a downed telephone cable. Heck, in many blue zone jurisdictions, police officers aren't even required to have a high school diploma, let alone training in power line event protocols. There's a reason that utility companies have roving trucks on call 24/7 - they aren't going to shut down even one square block of the grid on the say so of a cop or even a fire chief until somebody on their payroll has eyeballed the trouble. In the case of downed and severed power lines, automatic disconnects generally kick in. But to take a cop's say so on the matter makes as much sense as working on a high voltage circuit without a keyed lockout.
Silence, dumkopf! Is State Secret because squirrel was undercover double-agent for Møøsåd and Pøttsylvånia Måsønic Lødge.
That should give the knuckle-draggers something to worry about ... a secret conspiracy between the Jews and the Masons!
Carolyn
One blew out the transformer in our neighborhood last year and it took a day to get fixed. !%!@$# thing was char broiled.
You forget that this squirrel won the landmark Supreme Court decision Rocky vs. PG&E. This wasn't his normal powerline but he got bussed in there as part of desegregation. He wasn't the smartest squirrel either but got the power line because of Affirmative Action.
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