Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Close call with fireworks..

Headed to the range about 7:30 to relax for a bit, left my 3 boys and wife home alone. Been watering the front yard heavily all week to make a safe place for the kids to do their fireworks, and to keep from going up in flames when the neighbors go crazy.

But, the wife decides the concrete in the back yard is a good place to shoot off fireworks.. so she shoos them out and goes about her business. Should be safe she thinks, kids' ages are 14, 11 and 9.

You'd think she'd have learned about boys by now.

Kids, of course, don't want to keep fireworks on the cement.. 9 year old finds a nice stack of wood that we use for campfires stacked up by the kennel. Lights off some smoke bombs and firecrackers in there (no dog in kennel)...

I come home about an hour after they head inside.. as I pull past the back of the house I look over and see rolling smoke and flames by the kennel!!

Did I mention that my boat is backed up to the kennel?

I flip around the block and into the driveway at a very high speed (neighbors take notice) and sprint into backyard. Gallon jug of distilled water nearby puts out worst of flames and after pushing the boat away a hose soaks everything down for 15 minutes. Flames put out, 4 year old, 17' boat with 11 gallons of gas does NOT go boom -- though I think I got branded when I touched the transom (it was that hot), and only damage appears to be a melted taillight on the boat trailer and a burned strap.

Now trying to decide on their punishment.. 11 year old and 14 year old plead innocence, but they ain't getting off free since they should be helping watch their little brother. Not that I trust the 11 year old a whole lot farther than the 9 year old..

Course, I'm kinda fed up with the wife also... she babies them constantly and then is always surprised when they don't show a reasonable amount of responsibility. Guess she just thinks there's some magic age where it just automatically shows up... sigh....

4 beers down, maybe one more before bed. That's about a normal month's worth of beer for me:-)

For everybody else out there... have a SAFE 4th of July please!!

Well it might be a good thing to learn before they get a little older.

I was sixteen when we first came about our first haul of smoke bombs. Wondering what to do, somebody commented that if we threw about ten of them up on the roof of the house behind the fence, at the same, that sucker I do believe would look to be on fire.
Well, I know what you are thinking, but we got lucky the roof did not catch ablaze, but what it did do was the intended�it looked like a fire, which in turn brought two engines hauling around the corner�which then lead to one pissed off cop (who happened to be dear old Dad) pounding on my friends door.
I�ll never forget the look on his face when I answered the door.

�You, and your punk friends, get your asses around the corner and turn yourselves in�.

Ahh, was a long day & night <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Reminds me of my youth when my mother would yell; " Just wait until YOU have kids someday!!!".....But as usual I didn't listen to her. Plus now I know why my "old man's" gray hair came about the same time as my teenage years. And I was the oldest of four kids so they had 3 more to put up with after me. My dad never lived to see his grandchildren but when my son was driving me nuts with something I would look up at the sky and think; " this is my old man gettin' even with me from the great beyond for all the chit I put HIM through when I was that age". What goes around comes around I guess......

Grayling was about 6 and we were watching the fireworks in the Kodiak harbor. I happened to have a bucketful of outdated fusees and flares of several descriptions. Thought it would be a good safe time to burn 'em, but did not want to have Grayling too close as I did not want him to know it is fun to burn powder in any form...

So I took the bucket to a seine boat in the harbor and gave them to the crew and asked if they would go out on the dock and launch them...

We had not made it back to the boat before they launched one. There was that distinct "ting" of a guy wire being touched by the flare, so they decided to shoot them in the other direction to clear the rigging... The fact town is in that direction did not seem to hit them.

The first parachute flare dropped on the Mecca roof, a bar just above the harbor. The angle was low enough there was still quite a bit of combustible stuff left when it landed and very quickly someone ran up on the roof with a fire extinguisher.

The crew decided to shoot another parachute flare but wanted to clear the Mecca this time, so they lowered the angle and shot another... This one went farther on the horizontal, but was not very far above the cannery when it dropped its parachute. There was enough stuff left to bring a couple guys running with an extinguisher and a hose. They took quite a while to fight it, too...
art

I heard about guy who was building a deck and his 6 yo son was 'helping'. After a while, he went inside and called his father.
"Dad, I called to apologize."
"For what?"
"I've been working on the deck and little Johnny has been helping. I remembered how I used to help you with projects and I called to apologize."

When I was a kid, I got my hands on a big bunch of cherry bombs. That July 4, we went to my uncle Harold's farm for a picnic. Harold had a large concrete stock watering tank. My 3 cousins (all girls) and I were throwing cherry bombs in the tank and watching the water shoot 8' in the air. When we went home, I left them with a few bombs to play with. I later found out that 2 of the girls got a bright idea and taped 3 bombs together and threw them in the tank. It split all 4 corners of the tank and laid the sides down flat. From what I heard, Harold "colorfully suggested" that in the future I not bring any more cherry bombs within 8 miles of his place.

Dick

Did you guys ever read about Rollo Heyn?

This is probablly the worst case of home made fireworks (or bombs) I know of, the guy blew his stomach wide open. Worse yet what I heard was that the guys who brought the stuff along, or made the little bombs were fireman, but I can't confirm that, this happened a few years back.

Accident

Every 4th of July, I'm glad I'm not a Paramedic anymore...God be with those who still do that job.

Calhoun, not to get all nannyish, but if you want to start kicking butts I'd start with your own for buying fireworks for a 9,11, and 14 year old to touch except under your direct supervision.

Sometimes you run into defective fireworks, they can cause damage and serious injury, too.
One 4th of July back when my kids were little I started to light a roman candle and hold it by the tip end while the colored balls of fire shot out, but instead thought I better set a good example for the kids so I placed it on the ground before I lit it. Good thing I did 'cause after shooting out a couple of the fire balls the rest of it all of a sudden blew up, like a giant multi-colored sparkler, w/flaming balls going in all directions. If I had still been holding it, most likely would have at the very least been painful, not to mention me feeling pretty foolish.

The 4th is one of our busiest days of the year. Between the grass/barkdust fires to the occassional house fire to the injuries it is a moving day. I am on duty tomorrow, and preparing for a busy one since it has been hot and dry here for a while now.

Glad things worked out for the best for you a little burned up firewood is a cheap lesson that hopefully the kids learned.

The rangeland around here is like tinder right now. It's illegal to use fireworks on public land, of course, but that doesn't stop some of the idiots. We've had several local range fires in the last few days but they've got them out before they got too big. I don't know if they were caused by fireworks, but the danger is sure there.

Dick

At the risk of being labeled an old grump, I'll state my opinion. (rant on) I fail to see the redeeming quality in any kind of fireworks, from the "safe and sane" sparklers to the "grossly stupid" home made bombs. Someone please tell me were the joy is in watching something burn up or explode. I've seen too many fingers mangled or worse blown off, too many eyes destroyed, too much burned skin and flesh, and too much property destroyed by otherwise sensible people having "fun". Further, to teach a child, by example, to "play with matches" is the height of irresponsibility. My recomendation would be to gather the family for a roundtable disscussion and examine what happened and why and how a serious situation was narrowly avoided. This is an opportunity to teach about cause and effect, and how any of the children could have been maimed for "fun". As an exersise, you could have them put on mittens and wrap their hands in duct tape to simulate a stump. Better yet, try wearing a blindfold for a day or two to get a feel for blindness. This kind of activity just might even lead to a family decision to avoid foolish behavior in the future. Anyone who so wishes may feel free to throw stones at me, but before you do, thank what ever higher power you recognize, that your precious little bundles of joy have survived yet another holiday without becoming handicapped just so you could have "fun". On the other hand, should any one of you or anyone in your family have the misfortune to be maimed by a stupid fire works incident you have my sincerest sympathy and I offer my help in any way I'm able. (rant off)

I guess that makes me an old grump too. I just spent four nights listening to some pretty elaborate fireworks from everyone in the neighborhood. Fireworks of all kinds are illegal in my state but are sold in adjoining states. The fines for bringing the fireworks into the state are seperate from the fines for their use and both can include jail time. I wondered aloud why when I repeatedly heard on the radio about extra police being on the roads checking for, among other thiings, seat belt use, none of them were available to enforce the fireworks laws. Now, I enjoy fireworks as much as anybody but I get a little nervous when 9 or 10 drunken $hitheads are shooting thousands of dollars worth of incendiary devices skyward with little or no regard to where they come down. It would seem to me a relatively easy law to enforce as it is pretty hard to hide a fireworks display. With fines of $100 to $1000 per violation I don't know why the cops are wasting time on $15 seatbelt violations.

Yep, you're a couple of old grumps.

Go to China during the lunar new year, and you'll realize that things here are damn tame.


Regards,
Scott

I only like those little doohickies that they call "snakes". You light the little round thing on fire...and it grows into a snake!! I purchased two big bags of them, lol!! Ned called me "lame".....and he was too embarassed to buy them<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />!!

I was suprised to see sooooo many people spending sooooo much $$$ on elaborate fireworks....heck, I'd rather spend my money on other things....but to each their own!

HoundGirl

"Go to China during the lunar new year, and you'll realize that things here are damn tame."

No offense but many things about China are vile and offensive to me. This would be just one more.

Steve;

As usual, I'm with you on this one.

Then, wifey is next in line. WTF was she thinking?

After that, the boys get there's paddled.

And, that'd be about the end of the fireworks for a LONG time.