My Burn Facility Story

 I worked for two decades around classified material....which required 'destruction' on a regular basis.  One of the least preferred methods....is the burn facility situation.  

This is a contained building usually, which has a fire capability (usually with natural gas) and you toss in a bag or two....using a steel 'rake' to push it around, and in five minutes....add another bag or two.  

In winter months, I never minded the half-day duty.  In June/July?  It was absolutely miserable work, and you'd be consuming a six-pack of Mountain Dew over a three-hour period.  

I was stationed at X-base where we had one single burn facility, which was controlled with a key.  You'd check out the key.....walk up, and there was a button device with three option buttons.  It would have made sense to have just a on-button and off-button...but for some reason, there was a primer-button (you were supposed to press it for several seconds....to put some 'gas' in....before you hit the 'on' button).

This facility was crappy....marginally made to run, and about one-third of the time....never functioned correctly.

One day....Lt X arrived and wanted to be on this detail.  Why some officer would volunteer for this duty....is beyond me.  He'd accompanied some folks before, and he was just going over by himself.....with five or six bags.  What could go wrong....was the question to ask.

The burn facility buttons went into some crappy malfunction status.  The Lt had wasted twenty minutes getting it to work.

So he did what you'd expect any 12-year old kid would do.  He went to his truck, and got a gallon-can of gas....covering over the burn-sacks, and tossed them into 'hold'.  The sacks were completely covered in gas.  Then for one last attempt....he hit the on-button.

Some witness to the episode said that some flame of about 30 foot came out of the pit 'window' in a sudden burst.

Yeah, the Lt got a fair amount of the 'burn'.  Ambulance was called, and he probably spent three weeks in a hospital unit.  It was bad, but not to the degree that he was medically discharged. 

The problem was....they had to do a safety report, and explain how it happened.

In the end, they had to make a sign up....over the button area....that said that you could NOT add accelerant in any shape or form...to the burn facility.  

At the time (mid-1980s)....this burn facility had existed for 30-odd years and never required anything much for regulations or rules.