Pyro fun

We were all enjoying a typical day at the hangar yesterday when Walt (the elderly mechanic) came in looking a little bit out of breath and said “did you know there’s a grass fire headed for our planes?” Well, no, we hadn’t known. So we all rushed outside to see what he was talking about, and sure enough, there was a huge cloud of smoke billowing off of a line of flames being fanned by the strong wind right towards our hangar. We immediately raced to get the tow bars and pull the two aircraft away from the edge of the ramp to where the fire couldn’t reach them, choking in the heavy smoke. The flames were moving very quickly, and (after someone remembered the fuel cart at the last minute and we frantically moved that) we noticed they were headed for the hangar. We joined some of the other folks who were beating at the edges of the fire rather ineffectively with branches and dispensed the contents of something like four fire extinguishers, but were having a hard time keeping the flames from advancing towards the side of the hangar. Finally, the airport fire truck came barreling down the taxiway and managed to put out the worst of it with their water cannon. We ran around for a little while after that and put out the little pieces of smoke and fire that were left, and in the end we got the fire put out and saved the planes and the hangar from a sure death. It was definitely the most exciting part of the day, though, and was kind of a fun break during the times we weren’t too afraid that millions of dollars of equipment were going to go up in flames. Apparently, some chap over at Air Botswana (the national airline that has a hangar next to ours) was using a grinder and the sparks from that ignited the tinder-dry grass in the large field between our hangars. It was amazing to see how quickly the fire spread and how hot it got (it melted the plastic globe of a light on a high lamppost and some plastic netting on the lean-to on the side of the hangar). I also lost half of my arm hair and some of my eyebrows to the blistering flames. It was a good thing that Walt saw it when he did. Another day in the life, I suppose.