where there's smoke...?

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Last night, going to bed around midnight, we smelled smoke—like wood or paper burning smoke—up around Powder House and Packard. It was almost pleasant; it smelled like camping. But by 5am, the smell was so strong we woke up coughing and sneezing, put handkerchiefs over our noses and mouths, and closed the windows, making it hot and stuffy inside, but at least not too noxious to fall back to sleep.

Did anyone else experience this?

In fact we smell light smoke around bedtime in that area not infrequently. Does someone burn their rubbish in that area? (And if it's you, could you please, pretty-pretty-please, stop?) I sorta suspect that home-rubbish-incineration is illegal for exactly this reason.

Anyway, last night's was particularly terrible, and I'm wondering if maybe there was an actual house-fire this time in the area. Anyone know anything?

Comments

[misterthorn.livejournal.com]

I smelled it too, though not as strongly as you did. It was just faint enough to make me think I was going crazy.

[gilana]

You know, I've been smelling *something* this morning, but I thought it was in the house.

[geekpixie.livejournal.com]

I smelled it this morning, but not last night. I figured it was someone burning brush as there was no chemical smell from a house fire, etc.

[gruene.livejournal.com]

I smelled it this morning when I was leaving for work. It definitely smelled like wood burning, similar to the wildfire smoke we had back on Memorial Day.

There was a fire at a wood recycling facility in Peabody yesterday afternoon. I strongly suspect that's what caused the smoke.

http://www.firefightingnews.com/article-us.cfm?articleID=80600

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Oh, huh. That seems like it could be it, and could explain the slight chemically-tint my partner picked up.

I hope that's it, because that would mean it's going to stop.

I used to frequently drive by a mulch company in NH that had 24/7 sprinklers spraying down their wood piles. I thought it was really weird until someone told me that woodpiles heat up inside and can spontaneously combust from the volatile oils in the wood. hmmm...

[gruene.livejournal.com]

Here's another story with more details:

http://www.thedailyitemoflynn.com/articles/2010/06/21/news/news01.txt

The fire was on Sunday afternoon actually, but it burned a huge pile of mulch and twelve acres of brush along with some heavy equipment and oil tanker, which would explain the nasty reaction you had. The mulch pile is still smoldering, so we could have more smoke for a few days.

[comicnrrd.livejournal.com]

I smelled it very strongly on Thorndike at around 4 am, so much so that I got up and checked around my house to see if anything was on fire outside, because it basically smelled like someone had a campfire right outside my bedroom window, but there was no smoke to be seen.

Glad to know I wasn't insane.

[hikermtnbiker.livejournal.com]

Too funny. I did the same thing around 3am. Nice to know that I was not the only one creeping around outside my house in the middle of the night. The smell was so incredibly strong I figured that it had to be a local fire but no sirens. Only later did I conclude that it was the Peabody fire.

Housefire

[tealegirle.livejournal.com]

I passed a TREMENDOUS house-conflagration (flames engulfing the front porch, smoke column visible several blocks away) yesterday evening, one block off of Broadway near Magoun Square. Wouldn't be surprised if this was the cause.

Re: Housefire

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Oh man, you saw that fire?! I read about it on Boston.com; scared the hell out of me how quickly the whole place went up.

I think the smoke I was smelling last week was the mulch fire that a few people pointed out in this thread, but I'm really surprised I didn't see more activity on the list about that fire you saw.