Fire at my club

[JeffinNZ]

Here in Canterbury (the province I am in) right now it is DRY and has been HOT. I mean DRRRRYYY. We have had a few rural fires lately and my worse fears were recognised on Sunday morning at 4am when my mobile rang. The 100m back stop at the range was on fire big time.

The backstop has a steel 'eyebrow' to prevent any upwards escapees and the bullet catching media was ground up rubber (tyres mostly) on top of many years of tyres and soil. Well, a fire started somehow and lit the place up like a Christmas tree. As luck would have it there was nil wind so the fire was localised. The fire service had to get a digger in and pull the backstop apart to be sure the fire was out in the rubber. Link to our site as follows. I am the club secretary and update the site:

http://www.nzha.co.nz/?page_id=807

Today a small area immediately behind the former back stop ignited again and was controlled very quickly. We are fully insured at the club and will be fine to rebuild. It will just take some time. The buildings are untouched so we were lucky in that respect.

[338RemUltraMag]

Start looking for melted lead, there may be a silver lining in this, no pun intended. Glad nobody lost life of property.

[runfiverun]

hmmmm.
tires are pretty hard to light on fire.
you can't just toss a cigarette in one and have it go up.
you have to have something pretty substantial to get them going.
maybe a tracer smoldering would do it,but i'd look at other ummm "possibility's", especially with a second incident in a different spot.

[Johnch]

Our club had a fire in the 200 yd backstop pit several years back

That fire was caused by 2 guys shooting surpluss tracer/spotter ammo
Luckly they were able to put it out
Before it got realy going

We now ban tracer , spotter ammo

John

[HighHook]

Tracers and steel core ammo is banned in a lot of areas in so. Cal because of the dry brush around. I would say a tracer could have started that one. 4am... some early shooter there...

[SP5315]

My first thought is was caused by a tracer round. Buried rubber will smolder for quite sometime, kind of like a underground coal fire.

[cbrick]

Yikes! From the photos is doesn't appear there is much there to burn except the tires along with happening at 4:00 AM, sure did raise my eye brows.

No one hurt and no buildings damaged so just be thankful for the insurance.

A few years ago we had one of SoCal's famous wild fires burn through our entire 100 acre range complex. It didn't start at the range but it did burn to the ground thousands of acres of National forest surrounding our ranges. On the range property with a dozen buildings including black powder storage and the store with smokeless not a single building even had smoke damage. Our club range lost part of a wooden fence, a motor home and a couple of police training vehicles that were in storage were lost. A police storage building with hundreds of thousands of rounds of live ammo wasn't touched & the fire burned all the way around it. Simply amazing.

Rick

[JeffinNZ]

The fire officers reckon it started nearer 75m so if it did it rules other tracer. We have had a ban on them from day dot but there is never a shortage of Muppets who still arrive with them.

Our facility is 24/7. The range is lit so members can shoot whenever they like.

[runfiverun]

holy awesome.
i have shot at night at my range but it's by headlight and headlamp.
and i have shot a lot of trap at night [pretty cool too]
but to have a lighted range,,, man,just color me jealous.

[HighHook]

There is nothing like a summertime night shoot... the Magnum handgun blast flashes are the greatest of memories...

As for the muppets firing tracers. There are always a few that try to spoil it for the rest of us...

[MtGun44]

Glad it was contained. It would seem that a tracer getting into a rubber tire or fragments would be
perfect for setting it off. Great to hear it is insured.

Bill

[JeffinNZ]

More photos can be seen at this (https://picasaweb.google.com/105745058626346179375/NZHAFire?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMXY-ebQ66-9zQE&feat=directlink) link.

[HighHook]

WOW! You guys have a great range. Probably no time for you guys to have it back up and shoot'in...

[mwk1975]

Wow, great range indeed. From a fellow shooting enthusiast, glad to hear that it appeared to be localized with no collateral damage. AND count me in on the slightly envious crowd..... Lighted for 24/7 shooting, indeed!