Good scare for me

[ArmyPair2]

:confused3:My first project was to clear some land to make me a burn area away from my trees. My wife wanted the driveway cleaned up from what the loggers left behind. I had me a good pile ready to go to be burned. It was on 16 Oct.2 photo's below that I got to burn it and I thought I sprayed it down real good but after a week went by I started a 2nd pile on top of the old one.

Now what gets me is it went through rain showers and two days of high winds but this morning when I got up and walked out the front of the house and watched her rats playing, you call them cats. I looked over at my wood pile and it was gone and was smoking. I went back in the house to wake the wife up to get ready to go to church and asked her what time did she get up to start the fire?

She looked up at me and said what fire? I told her the wood pile and she said that she was in bed all night. what kind of worried me was that this was was day11 after the first burn of the wood pile and sometime during the night this 2nd wood pile caught fire without anybody watching it. During those 11 days that the old saying of "where there is smoke there is fire" did not apply here
:

 

[dave1949]

That can happen if you have a deep bed of coals or the wood goes under dirt.

Fortunately, no harm.

 

[Stimw]

Does the ground have a lot of peat? That can smolder for a long time underground.

 

[ArmyPair2]

Does the ground have a lot of peat? That can smolder for a long time underground.

No it is some good dirt and clay but I just never seen a fire come back to life after 11 days with no signs of life.

 

[oosik]

Happened to hunters at a remote location in Alaska. Their campfire ignited an underground coal seam in 1953 or '54 and its still burning deep underground to this day. DNR finally gave up trying to get it out after about two months of work.

 

[Dutch445]

any warm embers that were left after the original fire were probably buried in some ash, and as that wind came up,
i bet it blew some ash away and gave those embers some air. then you had fresh fuel on top and it took off,
aided by the wind.

 

[Sodo]

Yes thats a good scare. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Pilot]

Worked in Montana for 3 years and every year a slash pile burned in the fall lit up again in late spring or early summer and gave us a little wildfire.

 

[vtsnowedin]

The chunks of unburned logs left on top hold the ashes in place over a bed of coals and keep any rain from getting to them. A bit of old log burning on it's end under the ashes will slowly burn using what oxygen can get through the ash cover. Throw on some new wood and disturb the arraignment and you let fresh air into the bed of coals and off you go. That's why wild fire fighters are always turning logs over to get at the hot spots under them.

 

[milkman636]

I believe that would have surprised most of us. After 11 days without any smoke I'd figure it was out too.