WET is the City Daily Photo topic for today's Theme Day.
We have not much rain and no bodies of water here in my corner of Israel's Negev desert.
But the other day, a hot dry chamsin day, our town suddenly saw a lot of water--not from the sky but from fire hoses!
The crown of a palm tree suddenly burst into flames.
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION?! It is a known phenomenon especially in palms.
Soon the whole trunk and the hedge were burning.
Our Meitar Bitachon/Security team (bless them!) were on the scene quickly and rolled out their hoses.
The police and Fire Department arrived too.
Two firemen suited up and went to work.
At the end, our local hoses had themselves to be hosed down to clean the black soot off them.
The now leafless and blackened dead palm will hopefully be cut down soon.
That's a scary thing, trees suddenly bursting into flame for no good reason.
I hope never to see such a thing again.
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See Palm Trees as Fire Hazards, a useful page of advice, photos, and a video link by a California fire department.
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I have never heard of such a thing . Dina
ReplyDeleteThe poor tree, but good to see that the crews were so quick to respond.
ReplyDeleteThis is scary, especially since there are palm trees VERY close to my house!
ReplyDeleteRegarding your comment, yes, it's been snowing here for the last twenty four hours or so.
ReplyDeleteReal action shots this!
ReplyDeleteGood that the fire brigade turned up quickly.
That is something new to me,sure didn't know a Palm Tree could do that.
ReplyDeleteBeen off of post awhile so been catching up. Always enjoy your post.
I agree with others, it is very scary! I wonder how the extreme heat operates there rather than other places here in the US since I have never heard of that phenomena before. I also wonder if it is exclusive to Israel. As I do with other puzzling posts, I'm off now to do some research!
ReplyDeleteWait, wait, friends. Remember that spontaneous combustion is a RARE thing. Most people never saw it or even heard of it. It's not like it happens every day.
ReplyDeleteKate, it is not necessarily "sparked" by extreme heat. All the examples you find on YouTube are in America. The article linked in my post is from California. So no, it is not at all exclusive to Israel. Come to think about it, I've never heard about a case of a "spontaneously combusting" tree in Israel. Please let me know if you find some interesting information about it.
William in Canada, wow, don't get snowed in. It was snowing at the top of Mt. Hermon in northern Israel today too! Pretty strange for April.
ReplyDeletepoor palm tree
ReplyDeleteThe crown of a palm tree suddenly burst into flames? The Lord certainly moves in mysterious ways.
ReplyDeletePoor tree! And very frightening for you.
ReplyDeleteYes I should imagine it would be a pretty rare occurrence . Sometimes when we get temps in the 40C's I feel like I'm going to combust but thankfully as yet I have not 😀 this is definitely the most unusual post I've read for the theme, nice one Dina ☺
ReplyDeletePoor tree, Dina !
ReplyDeleteAmazing! I've read tales of human spontaneous combustion but I didn't know that could happen to plants in real life. Poor palm tree.
ReplyDeleteAn impressive action shot of these firemen at work. It's sad about the palm tree.
ReplyDelete