Too mulch to handle
Updated at 4:30 p.m.
Boston firefighters were kept busy today putting out fires in piles of mulch across the city. Crews were dispatched to at least ten locations in Dorchester, Central Square in East Boston, the Longwood Medical Area, Mission Hill and Beacon Hill to douse burning landscaping.
Locations include: Parker Hill Avenue on Mission Hill, Brookline Avenue in the medical area (two there so far), Bennington and London streets in East Boston and Cambridge Street between the T stop and Mass. General, and in Dorchester, Codman Square, Gallivan Boulevard by Neponset Circle; Ashmont T stop, the Best Buy in South Bay; Gallivan Boulevard by the Mt. Washington Bank and Gallivan Boulevard behind St. Brendan's.
Maybe concerned citizens could use some of those cases of leftover Poland Spring to wet down their mulch. Although none of today's fires seemed to cause any damage, Punditreview reminds us that a Peabody apartment building burned to the ground last year in a fire sparked by a lit cigarette thrown in some mulch.
View Mulch fires, 5/6/10 in a larger map
Comments
Yaw barking up the wrong tree on this one
.
Wow, Universal Hub solves a
Wow, Universal Hub solves a random, minor mystery for me. I stopped on Gallivan yesterday to let a woman cross and was puzzled why she was pouring steaming water on the mulch. I assumed it was some really bad tea.
Yet another fire today
Wowie, add another one on Heath St, between Walden and Shiller that just went down maybe 30 minutes ago.
A more serious fire
Two alarms.
Mulch WTF?
Does mulch combust spontaneously?
My head hurts!
Short answer: yes
This happened two doors down from us a couple summers ago. Basically, mulch breaks down the same way compost does (and that gardening/recycling term "hot compost" is not a figure of speech), and in the right conditions, it can catch fire.
The incident down the street was really minor -- some small flames, but mostly a surprising amount of really acrid-smelling smoke -- but I've heard of mulch fires big enough to, say, take out someone's garden shed.