Today was the men's breakfast and demolition day. The plan was to eat breakfast, have some fellowship, then go outside and demolish the old food pantry and burn it along with a lot of debris the church had collected over the past 12 months. After we got permission from the city we tossed a couple of matches on the pile and in about 30 seconds the pile was completely in flames.
I have never been next to a large fire before and I can say without reservations that the heat I felt was the most I had ever experienced. At one point my shirt (according to a laser thermometer) was 145 degrees and the shirt of one of the other trustees was 175. We were 30 feet away from the flames.
A couple of times small fires broke out away from the main blaze and the head trustee went over to put them. I went over to help him manhandle the hose but I just could not get as close as he did.
I have no idea how hot the fire was (the unit we used to test the temp topped out at 500 degrees) but at one point we pointed it at the ground a couple of feet from the blaze and it registered 475 degrees. Ouch.
We decided that next time we would not make pile quite so large. Had the wind picked up we would have lost control of that fire very quickly.
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