That's a nice picture of a handful of magnetite at the top of the article, too.
-Michael in so. Cal. On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 1:10 PM, dorifry <dori...@embarqmail.com> wrote: > > The idea that small meteorites can start fires has become "common knowledge" > in the mind of the general public. > > I like how he calls them "nickel rocks," and how they speculate in the last > paragraph that meteor showers may have started the Chicago Fire! > > http://kdrv.com/oregon_trails/233107 > > > > By Ron Brown > > > > SAMS VALLEY, Ore. -- This past summer marks the 17th anniversary of one of > the biggest fire seasons in Southern Oregon in several years, including the > Hull Mountain Fire in Sams Valley. Investigators are pretty sure that fire > was arson-caused. > > > There was another fire in the same area just a few weeks later. It was called > the "Sprignet Butte Fire", and burned over a thousand acres in the Evans > Creek area. > > > Those who were in the Rogue Valley in the summer of 1994 remember it as a > particularly bad year for wildfires. Within weeks of the end of the Hull > Mountain Fire, which burned several homes and killed a man, another fire > broke out near Sprignet Butte, just a mile or so from the start of the Hull > Mountain Fire. > > > Investigators say several ignition points were located, near a forest road. > It certainly looked like the work of arsonists, maybe the same person who > started the Hull Mountain Fire, but could there be another explanation? > > > Sharon Weeg thinks so. She lived near there then, and had already been > evacuated three times because of fires that summer. She says fire > investigators then were skeptical. They'd never heard of a meteorite started > a wildfire. After all these years, she's convinced that space rock landed in > the tinder-dry forest and started the Sprignet Butte Fire. > > > The question always remained... What happened to any of that meteorite? Could > it have survived? And could it still be up there? That's where Tony Gallios > comes into the story. Earlier this year he met Sharon Weeg at Accurate > Locators in Gold Hill, shopping for parts for his metal detector. When she > told him about the meteorite she saw, his curiosity led him to go on a search > into the hills near east Evans Creek, to see if he couldn't find a trace of > that space rock. > > > Gallios found three pieces of nickel rock that seems to meet all the tests so > far for being a meteorite. There were three pieces, all within a few inches > of each other. All seem to fit together. Gallios says he's in contact with > the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory to confirm that it is, in fact, a space > rock. > > > It's been a little over 17 years ago when the Sprignet Butte Fire burned > across those hills, scorching almost 1,200 acres. State fire investigators at > first thought it was an arsonist that started those fires. Now there's a > chance that the stones that were found by Tony Guillios could've been > meteorites that could actually started a good part of that fire. > > > Dick Pugh with the Cascadia Meteorite Lab is attempting to catalogue every > meteorite that's ever landed in Oregon. He says there's about a half dozen so > far and the first were actually just a few miles from the rock Tony Found, on > Sams Creek near Gold Hill. Actually, several pieces were found mostly by gold > miners. > > > Others have been found near Klamath Falls, in Antelope Valley, and near > Lakeview. If the meteorites did start the Sprignet Butte Fire, there may be > other pieces still out there. Not hot any more, but perhaps the "smoking > guns" fire investigators have been looking for almost two decades. > > > Scientists and fire investigators are not sure that meteorites the size of > the objects found by Gallios really can start fires. Some speculate that a > rash of fires in 1871, including the great Chicago Fire and the Peshtigo, > Wisconsin Fire could have be linked to meteor showers that summer. Meanwhile, > others observers say meteorites are actually too cool when they hit the > ground to start a fire. > > > ______________________________________________ > Visit the Archives at > http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html > Meteorite-list mailing list > Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
