Steel Building Burns at Acorn
Firefighters arrived quickly
[Update March 12, i have volunteered to coordinate gifts to Acorn around this event. If you have anything you want to donate, please contact me (in the comment section here or by email at paxus at twinoaks dot org]
i was quite pleased with the fire at the Acorn steel building. Not because no one was hurt, tho this was certainly a relief. Not because the blaze did not leap to the new seed office, which would have been seriously disheartening for Acorn in general and especially the crew working hard to complete it. Nor was my joy from the fact that the bad chicks were moved to safety a couple days before the blaze.
What i was pleased about was that within an hour of the fire starting, after power was returned to the Acorn campus after having been out for a couple of days, i got 4 different sets of messages that i was happening. GPaul texted me first, Mac phoned me an update, Puck gave the most details of the blaze and another person who does not like to be named told me what was happening.
What thrills me about this is that all these people thought in response to this tricky situation they would call me. Not that i was going to do anything in the immediate sense (except blab about it on social media), but because i was someone who it was going to be important to and now is was in the Acorn family and needed to be told about our shared loss.
Steel building post fire interior – weight machine and drying racks – all photos by Mac
And as has been true for the last several fires, we were quite lucky. While we lost a new vehicle.
This new car was perhaps 60 feet from the blaze.
We did not loose the much more expensive tractor, which is occasionally parked in this building, nor the near by rec collective (a straw bale and thus highly combustible building) nor the all wood new smoke shack.
We did loose a bunch of tools, perhaps 5% of our seed back stock inventory, all of commie clothes, a bunch of empty seed packets, several freezers, lots of supplies. It was a big building, full of some useful stuff.
Before you could not see thru the building
And we are already planning the benefit concert for the commie clothes replacement fund for the week after Acorns Land day celebration (April 6). Encouraging people to donate useful clothes and costumes to our new library. And there will be a stage and the circus tent here, so mark your calendars.
Also all our seed packets were destroyed.
lone fire fighter – steel storage building burns March 7, 2013 @ 6 PM
7 Responses to “Steel Building Burns at Acorn”
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- - March 23, 2013
Straw bale buildings are not highly combustible. They smolder, so smoke is an issue, but they do not burn nearly as quickly and as hot as wood.
I’m glad to hear no one was hurt! I will some bring extra clothes with me when I Visit in a few weeks. I don’t have much, I don’t buy clothes, everything I have is gifted to me, but I still have a bunch of stuff I don’t regularly wear. Also, there’s a thrift store that throws away a lot of perfectly good clothing they can’t sell near me, I’ll see what I can salvage from them. I don’t have much in regard to money, but I’m very resourceful and I’ll see what I can find.
I’m sure you’ll update us here on how local folks can provide help in various ways. And call me directly, as well!
Dearest Kate:
So the best thing local folks who want to help can do is provide clothes, because we lost all of commie clothes in this fire. And i will check in with Acorn to figure out which types of clothes are most desirable, but it will likely be comfortable utilitarian stuff – tho i am hoping to get some costumes out of this tragedy, from generous folks like you.
Paxus at Acorn
10 Pregnant Ivy, Rosie and Claire 2013
Seriously, straw bales are *less* likely to burn than wood, because they have been baled tightly. Cover the outside with stucco, you have a very low oxygen content and no exterior surface fibers to catch, its very unlikely fire fodder. I’ll put it this way…I once saw a straw bale house with a brick chimney. Someone left way too much creisote in the chimney and left. The chimney caught fire. While everyone was gone the chimney burned until the bricks fell down, and the straw house just chilled right there. Stucco was fine. Black, but fine. Wiki it if you don’t believe me
And, as discussed before, it is extremely reasonably priced for how efficient it
is.