Morning Lineup – July 3

Yuppies Keep Us In Business

About 15 years ago a new challenge started showing up for fire departments everywhere.  As the Yuppy generation reached the age where the children were multiplying and they could afford a house of their own, they would blunder their way through the “cozy fireplace” scene.  For some inexplicable reason, after they were finished watching the flaming sticks, they would dump the hot ashes directly into a plastic trash can.

Suddenly we were running late-night calls where the attached garage was blazing away while the family was sitting in the Great Room enjoying a videotape.  Usually the neighbor across the street noticed the pulsating orange glow reflecting through his window and called 9-1-1.

I never could understand how a seemingly-educated person could be so numbingly void of common sense that they would dump hot ashes and coals into a flammable container and then leave it in the house.   But that’s Yuppies for you.

Over the years, they seem to have been able to spread the word around and you’re not seeing nearly as much of that kind of fire anymore.  But still, they occasionally happen.  Last month in Fairfax County, Virginia one sap couldn’t wait for winter and just dumped his barbeque coals into the bucket.  House gone.  And yesterday this item from Salt Lake Tribune:
“Ashes left in a trash can from a weekend barbecue started a fire Monday morning that destroyed a Holladay house, displacing a family.”

There are not as many of these as there used to be…but fear not.  Calls will pick up again once these start showing up in family rooms of McMansions near you:

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