[meteorite-list] Meteorites Supposedly Start Forest Fire

[dorifry]

The idea that small meteorites can start fires has become "common knowledge" 
in the mind of the general public.

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!

http://kdrv.com/oregon_trails/233107



By Ron Brown



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.


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.


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.


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?


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.