I blew up a brush pile the other night.

Don't expect gasoline to burn the same way it always has. It does some very strange and dangerous things these days.

I have been hearing stories of extraordinary accidents with gasoline for several years and seeing some of the resulting injuries. Gasoline has always been dangerous, nothing new there, right? Wrong. Dead wrong.

I wasn't injured but I got to experience a little of what I have been hearing. I was trying to burn a pile of brush that was not well dried and was using gasoline to start the fire.

I have firefighting training and I have a strong sense of self-preservation from my dabbling in life-threating activities to feed my adrenaline junkyhood. Still, I managed to create an explosion that defies all of my past experiences with similar situations.

I am serious. This was an explosion that could have hurt or killed people. Better half felt the concussive force from fifty or sixty feet away. Have heard stories of this being accompanied by a super-heated jet of air or flames. It could happen to you. Forget everything you think you know about gasoline in this type of situation.

I can show you how to blast a metal drum sixty feet into the air or rattle all of the windows in your neighborhood but we won't be using pump gas anymore.

If I had thought about it I would have pulled the return line off the car and used diesel. The gas was sitting there in the can, too easy.