Incident Reports

You truly cannot appreciate the number of near misses that I can attest to in my portfolio of pyro. They range from the brutally obvious " Saw that one coming a mile away." to the "Damn, I never thought THAT could happen.", the serious "We really need to find that bodypart fast!" to the ridiculous "Hair is highly over-rated and besides it'll grow back in a few months." At any rate they're always damned funny to read about.

Incident Report Number 1
Perhaps one of the funniest incident reports involved a home-made flame thrower of our own design. I know what you're thinking and you're right. A flame thrower is not a tool to be toyed with. It is a serious military weapon of indiscriminate and mass destruction. Fuck that. A flame thrower needs to be introduced to new and exciting environments: bring on the great indoors.

Its amazing how near sighted two pyros can be when testing new ideas. So much so that is seriously endangers their safety and quality of life, especially if parents ever found out. Surprisingly enough, a common Zippo lighter can be converted into a stellar short range flame thrower with the addition of a syringe. We will no go into a discussion of the acquisition of a glass syringe (and its needle) here. By the way, if any of you are wondering why those cheap-ass plastic syringes where not used, think about the basic thermodynamics of a hot metal needle and rejoin us once you've finished the math.

Lighter fluid, as is commonly known, tends to be pretty flammable stuff. Why else would they load it into lighters right? So why not harness the inherent volatility of lighter fluid with the hydrodynamics of syringe? Such was the premise of an afternoon's work in Smoke's basement. After loading a syringe with fluid we slid the needle into the protective grill found atop a zippo lighter (right around the wick) and proceeded to pump the lighter fluid into a high arch. The results: an arch of flame which, fortunately for us, expired mere inches from the carpeted floor. Good for us.

A second attempt with this basic design revealed the varied pressure on the piston of the syringe produced varied arches - the harder the push the higher the arch. Pretty basic stuff really. With more pressure, the arch was now very close to the ceiling and still very close to the floor when it expired. Hehe cool Beavis.

The third attempt yielded slightly less favorable results when the arch made momentary contact with the basement ceiling and all hell broke loose. Burning fluid splashed onto the ceiling plaster (incidentally we where VERY lucky it wasn't a paneled ceiling) and begun to burn hot and fast. The resulting few seconds where life shortening. A damp towel was grabbed from an adjoining bathroom as the flames spread on the ceiling and used to smother the smoky fire within about 10 to 15 seconds. As we surveyed the damage, we quickly deduced that our lives where very likely over. A very large burn pattern and smoke stains mottled the ceiling. And one word crept into my mind as I looked at it. Oops.

Then, struck by what could only be described as divine inspiration, Smoke ran upstairs and began to rummage through a box of Christmas decorations until he found a can of window snow which we used cover the offending marks. We covered up the majority of the damage and with a dark pair of sunglasses on, the lights turned off, and distracted by a strobe light, Smoke's parents might never notice. To this day it remains a testament to our mutual stupidity.




Incident Report Number 2

Although rule number one is to be taken seriously, we decided that in the interest of scientific study, we should test a landmover indoors, after all, if handled properly what's the worst that could happen? Smoke's parents where out of town for the weekend and it was pretty quiet in town so we created a medium powered landmover to be detonated in Smoke's downstairs shower. Once again, please feel free to review rule number one at this time.

We made light plans for this one, placing the landmover close to the tiled edge of the shower to defect debris away from us and the open bathroom door. Hindsight is always excellent. Mistakes are much easier to see once they've happened and this is no exception. Landmovers inherantly create a lot of smoke. Smoke smells, and in this case, it smells kind of funny. Sort of like burning plastic with a bit of a harsh edge to it. As the landmover ripped apart violently, thick smoke poured from behind the shower curtain completely filling the basement. Consequently, all the smoke alarms in the house went absolutely crazy. Oops.

It took three full sized fans running twenty-four hours a day almost the whole weekend to clean and vent the smoke and get the smell back to pseudo-normal.







Copyright PyroGuy© Productions 1999