Apparently Smokey was right. I can prevent forest fires.

The only place I have ever put out a fire before today was in my own kitchen.

I'm not writing about this incident to brag about what I did. I'm writing this more for the 20 or 30 people who drove past a small fire that was clearly starting to spread across dry and dead grass.

Also, I am in no way comparing myself to any brave member of local fire department but today with the help of 3 other complete strangers I helped extinguish a growing brush fire on the side of 9D.

My commute home was a little bit longer than usual today. It was all pretty normal until I hit some pretty heavy traffic on 9D leaving Wappingers falls. Traffic came to halt and I though the reasoning might be because of a serious accident as I saw some heavy smoke bellowing above a few cars ahead of. Then I noticed a construction crew so I thought that maybe someone was burning leaves. There was no panic and that's the only time I've seen smoke like that on the side of the road. No other explanation came immediately to my mind.

When I approached the smoke I finally noticed that it was coming from a small patch of knee flames and it was spreading.

I along with a couple of other strangers pulled over and put out the small fire with bottles of water from our car.

A retired firefighter was one of the people who pulled over so thankfully we had some experienced help.

As it turns out the fire was most likely started because the construction crew had placed a road flare on the grass upside down.

 

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