The Pyromaniac's Curse

There’s certainly nothing intrinsically funny about forest fires. However, one
particular conflagration back in the early ’90s did let me meet some very nice firemen.
Photo: Sippakorn Yamkasikorn

I have thus far inadvertently instigated three proper forest fires. This is indeed not the sort of thing about which one should boast. However, they all ultimately ended well.

I was stationed on a sprawling Oklahoma military base home to the Field Artillery. Everything from small arms to sky-splitting Multiple Launch Rocket Systems tore the ranges asunder night and day. However, the firing of personally owned automatic weapons on the post ranges was strictly verboten. For a young buck with a pair of transferable machineguns, what was a brother to do?

My sweet bride’s solution was the birthday gift of a year’s membership to a nearby civilian range. So long as I was safe, they didn’t care if I ran my machineguns or not.

Some shooting buddies from college came up from Dallas for the weekend. We had planned this outing for months and had stockpiled a prodigious quantity of ammunition in support. We also brought along half-a-dozen milk jugs filled with water to serve as crude reactive targets.

This MAC10 sub-machinegun set me back $650 back in 1987. M158 Star Clusters
sell for about $75 online these days. I once inadvertently incinerated a modest
fraction of Oklahoma with such a trinket.

Tactical Riverdance

I planned to kick off the day’s festivities with a GI-issue M158 Star Cluster rocket. How I came by the thing doesn’t matter. Suffice to say, the statute of limitations has long since expired.

Star Clusters are as cool as Steve McQueen’s sunglasses. This tidy little folding-fin rocket comes packed within an aluminum tube. To fire the thing, you remove the cap from the top and slip it onto the bottom. You then hold the unit facing upward in the left hand and strike the base vigorously with your right. A firing pin inside the cap detonates the solid propellant.

The Star Cluster rocket rises about 250 feet before expelling five bright illuminant assemblies. Total burn time is six to 10 seconds.

The little rocket roared to life and burst at the prescribed height with prodigious vigor. As we had a robust headwind, the rocket then drifted over our heads and fell back behind us. We all had a chuckle and took up our favorite stutter guns to get the party started in earnest. At that point, I hazarded a glance over my shoulder and noticed the tiniest wisp of smoke.

Deleterious curiosity not being confined solely to the feline, we young men climbed out of the depressed range space to investigate. The burgeoning grass fire was by then perhaps 15 feet across. We commenced to stamping about like a Riverdance troupe on crack.

For the briefest moment, the battle teetered. We retrieved our milk jug targets and began emptying them along the expanding perimeter of the blaze. We had maybe half of the conflagration controlled when there arose a mighty wind. That’s when things got real.

Vermin Exodus

The grass thereabouts was perhaps waist deep and speckled throughout with isolated cedar trees, several of them a couple dozen feet high. When the hot Oklahoma wind added its mischief to the mix the blaze blossomed like Trump’s temper. When overcome, the trees exploded like bombs.

It is simply breathtaking to appreciate how many small creatures call your basic patch of Oklahoma grassland home. A modest dirt road bisected this enormous prairie, but the fire cleared this impediment with ease. I got to this failed firebreak just in time to see a veritable horde of rats, mice and similar displaced vermin running for their lives.

One rangy rat of simply epic proportions stopped in the road not 10 meters from where I stood. For a pregnant moment we just stared at each other. His beady little eyes said flatly, “I really, really hate you, man,” before he scampered off.

At that point we had a decision to make. We could load up our vehicles and make haste, all the while fabricating some plausible cover story to use when the next day it was determined we had incinerated the preponderance of the American Midwest. We opted instead to do the right thing and fetch the Fire Brigade.

While awaiting the professionals, I waded into the conflagrating grass and single-handedly rescued the range facility’s port-a-john from a certain fiery doom. I would be reticent to use the appellation hero myself in describing my actions that fateful day. However, I would not much object should others choose to do so.

The pumper truck made short work of the carnage. I ultimately incinerated maybe four acres. Nothing of substance was destroyed, though I did struggle to explain the liberated GI-issue rocket flare to the firemen. They sighed, and I didn’t go to jail. A grand time was had by all … except for the rat. His day kind of sucked.

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