At hundreds of farmsteads and rural residents across New York State it is just another day. People get up in the morning and have their breakfast, make a lunch, and off they go doing their work. They unwrap their pop-tart and put the wrapper in the trash can. They get the mail and dump half of in the trash. The finish off the peanut butter and it goes in the trash. The styrofoam wrapper the hamburg patties are wrapped are tossed.

Just a typical day in our over packaged and wasteful society. That afternoon, like many that proceeded the person takes their trash out back to the burn barrel, strikes a match, and sets some of the paper on fire. The fire flames up as the trash starts to melt and burn and be disposed off. Unbeknown to that person, things are about to be very different today.

Today the ground is dry, and there is a slight warm breeze coming from the south. A brush fire starts and burns nearly fifty acres of pasture and woods alike. This was the news story of the day last Friday when an out of control trash fire burned nearly everything in it's path. It was pure luck that no houses or other valuable property where destroyed in this fire.

One has to wonder how one could be so careless with fire. Then you think about how often that person – like many others – goes outside and burns their trash. It's probably a bi-weekly routine, as they go through their consumables and dispose of their packaging. People sometimes get careless when they do something over and over again.

People need to realize the real danger of fire when it's uncontrolled and can burn valuable property. The same fire that destroys and disposes of trash also can destroy a house. Fire is dangerous, and we always must be aware of our surroundings whenever we start a fire, and make sure that it is unlikely that the fire will spread to items that we do not want to burn.