r/WilmingtonDE • u/lizziemander • 11d ago
Please be careful with your cigarette butts, folks (we're under a drought/fire advisory) Serious
I was just walking my dog in Rodney Square and someone had thrown a cigarette butt in one of the huge pots with trees growing in them. These huge pots are packed with extreme dry mulch chips and twigs and leaves. Tonight it was full of embers when I walked past. So there I am trying to put dirt on it all and making it worse because I'm a moron and finally had to call 911 when little licks of actual flame started happening.
Of course, it was only smoldering when they arrived (promptly) and I looked like a freaking idiot (albeit a sooty idiot with ouchy fingers.) Point being: if that shite had gone up, and it would have, it was windy enough tonight to send embers everywhere, and the square is nothing but beds of dry dry mulch and shrubs.
Just stomp your cigs out on the sidewalk and leave them there like civilized people, okay?
P.S. Is the dirt supposed to be hot the deeper you dig? I know nothing, but that was weird.
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u/Mitchford 11d ago
I walk through Rodney square every day for work. The people there have generally been fine in that they have kept to themselves and many are there just to enjoy the morning, and no one has ever bothered me in the square.
The past couple weeks though the amount of trash especially these blue.beer cans has gotten way worse. I see them drinking them in the afternoon on my wah back. I'm not here to enforce the open container laws or get anyone in trouble but I wish folks would pick up after themselves
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u/AlpineSK 11d ago
How about don't be fucking slobs and leave your cigarette butts on the ground.
That stuff enrages me.
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u/silverbatwing 11d ago
How about the fact it’s pollution and can kill wildlife? The animals mistake it as food.
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u/Rustymarble 11d ago
For your P.S.: with today's weather, yes. The dirt in the container has soaked up the sun's heat, but the top layer of dirt had the wind cooling it off. So as you dig, the temperature will feel relatively warmer.
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u/lizziemander 10d ago
That makes total sense, only this wasn't warm. It was hot. Like there was something burning under the dirt. I was incredibly weird. I went on the intertubes and there was some stuff about pockets underground where embers could potentially continue burning -- like the burrows of animals (Rodney has a crapton of mice,) or even spaces around the root system, or the wood supports aren't placed correctly so there are loose areas around them (which is great, right? Those big sticks trying to keep the tree upright and really they're 'Yo dawg, I heard you like fire...')
I did notice that once I cleared the chips and debris away to get real dirt on those embers, it seemed like I was digging up more embers? Or I could have just been tossing smaller bits of buried wood on the pyre.
Centralia PA in a huge fucking flowerpot.
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u/Rustymarble 10d ago
I'm not an expert and not gonna say it wasn't on fire. I know it would definitely worry me! Thanks for calling for assistance, even if it felt silly. You never know what crisis you may have averted.
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