Is He Good Or What?

A couple of nights ago, we had a call just before eleven at night to investigate a smell of smoke from a resident on West Beach Road. Charlestown Police arrived first, and advised dispatch that the smell might be coming in from across the pond, possibly the Shelter Harbor area.

Engine 6 arrived just ahead of me and confirmed that there was no problem in the residence, so we started to "sniff" elsewhere. Based on their locations at the time, I had Engine 2 divert into Shady Harbor to check the area, and had Engine 7 do the same in Shelter Harbor. Meanwhile Chief Kenyon went to the Quonnie Breachway area and I headed back to the Haversham and Weekapaug areas.

As it turned out, the smell seemed to be everywhere, hanging in the heavy haze that was in the air that night. Karl called in from the breachway reporting that he believed that the smell was coming in on a southwest wind and was probably due to an atmospheric condition bringing smoke in, possibly from the brush fires in the Carolinas.

Meanwhile, calls started coming in from other locations along the coast. We cleared the incident and left it at that. I met with Karl before we headed home, and he stated that he was going to try to check into it on the computer. That was that. Everybody went home.

Lo and behold, the six o'clock news the following night reported the same "smells and bells" calls were going on in the coastal area around Bourne, Massachusetts and that it had been determined that the source of the smoke odor was indeed the North Carolina brush fires. Karl also sent me a follow up e-mail with the following graphic attached.

The whole point of this is that you simply can't beat the experience and knowhow that comes with Deputy Chief and Principal Fire Ranger Karl Kenyon. Apparently, he can sniff out a wildland fire from hundreds of miles away.