Many barns have burned from farmers putting up their hay when it was too
wet.  The composting process makes the interior so hot that it ignites
the dryer outer layers. I suppose this could happen under the right
natural conditions too.

Jerry-Offtrail


On Fri, 17 May 2002 11:10:03 -0700 "Brian Cluff" <brian@snaptek.com>
writes:
> > Yes, in fact the biggest fire I ever worked on was started by 
> friction.
> We
> > had a very severe wind storm and it blew a dead tree down.  It was 
> on a
> > VERY steep hillside and we were in the middle of a drought then 
> also.  By
> > the time that the tree got to the bottom of the hill there was 
> plenty of
> > heat to ignite the very dry underbrush in the area.  Lightning is 
> of
> course
> > the normal way that most fires started where I was at.
> 
> I've seen spontaneous combustion before.  It was in a neighbors back 
> yard
> (the type of neighbor that nobody wants) who just kept pileing up 
> their
> mowed grass until it was about 15 feet X 10 Fett 4 feet tall.
> Well, they are finally gotten themselves evicted, and being the type 
> of kid
> I was, I was playing in their (ex)yard and suddently the pile of 
> grass just
> went up.... course I got blamed for it anyway, but their got an 
> apology when
> it went up again a day later after being soaked pretty good.
> I could imagine that could also happen in the wild if a ton of 
> leaves or
> something collected in a crevasse, after a while it could go poof!
> 
> Brian Cluff
> Team Snaptek
> 
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