[meteorite-list] Meteorites Supposedly Start Forest Fire

From: Michael Mulgrew <mikestang_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:12:21 -0800
Message-ID: <CAMseTy2Ui4dqTh_x_1Sa0-guh+r4bkjkrJtXsCv2CAX5LtAARQ_at_mail.gmail.com>

That's a nice picture of a handful of magnetite at the top of the article, too.

-Michael in so. Cal.


On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 1:10 PM, dorifry <dorifry at embarqmail.com> wrote:
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> The idea that small meteorites can start fires has become "common knowledge" in the mind of the general public.
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> I like how he calls them "nickel rocks," and how they speculate in the last paragraph that meteor showers may have started the Chicago Fire!
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> http://kdrv.com/oregon_trails/233107
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> By Ron Brown
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> SAMS VALLEY, Ore. -- This past summer marks the 17th anniversary of one of the biggest fire seasons in Southern Oregon in several years, including the Hull Mountain Fire in Sams Valley. Investigators are pretty sure that fire was arson-caused.
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> There was another fire in the same area just a few weeks later. It was called the "Sprignet Butte Fire", and burned over a thousand acres in the Evans Creek area.
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> Those who were in the Rogue Valley in the summer of 1994 remember it as a particularly bad year for wildfires. Within weeks of the end of the Hull Mountain Fire, which burned several homes and killed a man, another fire broke out near Sprignet Butte, just a mile or so from the start of the Hull Mountain Fire.
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> Investigators say several ignition points were located, near a forest road. It certainly looked like the work of arsonists, maybe the same person who started the Hull Mountain Fire, but could there be another explanation?
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> Sharon Weeg thinks so. She lived near there then, and had already been evacuated three times because of fires that summer. She says fire investigators then were skeptical. They'd never heard of a meteorite started a wildfire. After all these years, she's convinced that space rock landed in the tinder-dry forest and started the Sprignet Butte Fire.
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> The question always remained... What happened to any of that meteorite? Could it have survived? And could it still be up there? That's where Tony Gallios comes into the story. Earlier this year he met Sharon Weeg at Accurate Locators in Gold Hill, shopping for parts for his metal detector. When she told him about the meteorite she saw, his curiosity led him to go on a search into the hills near east Evans Creek, to see if he couldn't find a trace of that space rock.
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> Gallios found three pieces of nickel rock that seems to meet all the tests so far for being a meteorite. There were three pieces, all within a few inches of each other. All seem to fit together. Gallios says he's in contact with the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory to confirm that it is, in fact, a space rock.
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> It's been a little over 17 years ago when the Sprignet Butte Fire burned across those hills, scorching almost 1,200 acres. State fire investigators at first thought it was an arsonist that started those fires. Now there's a chance that the stones that were found by Tony Guillios could've been meteorites that could actually started a good part of that fire.
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> Dick Pugh with the Cascadia Meteorite Lab is attempting to catalogue every meteorite that's ever landed in Oregon. He says there's about a half dozen so far and the first were actually just a few miles from the rock Tony Found, on Sams Creek near Gold Hill. Actually, several pieces were found mostly by gold miners.
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> Others have been found near Klamath Falls, in Antelope Valley, and near Lakeview. If the meteorites did start the Sprignet Butte Fire, there may be other pieces still out there. Not hot any more, but perhaps the "smoking guns" fire investigators have been looking for almost two decades.
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> Scientists and fire investigators are not sure that meteorites the size of the objects found by Gallios really can start fires. Some speculate that a rash of fires in 1871, including the great Chicago Fire and the Peshtigo, Wisconsin Fire could have be linked to meteor showers that summer. Meanwhile, others observers say meteorites are actually too cool when they hit the ground to start a fire.
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Received on Tue 13 Dec 2011 05:12:21 PM PST