Monday 18 July 2011

Fire hazard

I was walking in the garden of the flat last Saturday, it was the evening, a sunny, just fresh enough evening with a bit of wind like I like them. I went near the road, in a piece of lawn between two stone walls (well, a stone fence by the road and a stone wall). There are some trees, bushes and flowers that not many people bother to see. And then I saw five white paper bags by the fence, with holes in them that were making figures (a sun, a star, flowers, etc) and in each bag... lit candles. Some of the sides of the bags were already burning. I blew the candles and took them and the paper bags away. And then I wonder who was the careless idiot who had put them there.

I mean, it was an obvious fire hazard. Maybe unlikely to do real damages, but still. There was enough combustible stuff around, lots of grass and vegetation. The bags looked all fancy, the kind of thing one of our elderly neighbours would buy. But why would someone living here do something like this? I saw four teenagers walking in the street when I was about the remove the bags, they were loud and stupid like I guess teenagers often are on Saturday evenings, but that doesn't look like a malicious tricks they would pull. I mean, it was just fancy bags and small candles. Since it happened, I keep thinking about it. More out of curiosity than fear. But whoever did this, it was still stupid.

2 comments:

The Artful Gypsy aka Wendy the Very Good Witch said...

Well lots of people light luminaries such as those. Especially on holidays like Christmas and Halloween. But why they lit just a couple and then left them unattended is strange and bit irresponsible. They can be very pretty, but of course anytime you light something you are not supposed to go off and leave it. Probably a good thing you did happen by!

Guillaume said...

What is even stranger is that they were not easy to see: the fence was hiding them. I had to walk by to notice them. Which makes me suspect that they were not there for aesthetic purposes.