use common sense if you have a outdoor fire pit please...

i posted this on the forums, so some of you may have read this already, but it's very important that people use common sense.

please do not put combustables in it in this heat unles syou plan on starting the fire right then and there. yesterday (7/31) i was outside and noticed some smoke coming from my neighbor's firepit thing.. it's black and metal and a cylinder shape... i said to jason, "um.. the neighbor's firepit is smoldering and i don't think anyone is home." so jay said he'd be right out to look at it... and low and behold a fire was starting b/c they left some wood or some cardboard or something in there. jay knocked on the door to see if anyone was home while i got our hose ready. and by the time i got the hose over the fence flames were actually starting. no one was home, so we put it out with our hose. now that whole deck could've gone up in flames if we weren't there to put it out. all b/c they were careless and left shit in there. they keep their pit on the deck and usually it's okay but this time it was pushed into the corner very close to the railing. when they came home 10 mintues later i told them, and they said thanks. didn't seem to concerned, but whatever. an hour later it was smoking again, and his 8 year-old and i put out the fire b/c his dad didn't seem to care, and their hose didn't reach the deck, so we used ours agian..

please be very careful with these.


my husband and i wet it pretty good the first time, but the heat from the firepit cover and the outside temp got it cooking again about an hour later! it was very freaky, but the 8 year-old and i soaked it for a good solid 5 minutes. he took the cover off so he could wet it really good and it remained off for the rest of the day. today it's back on, and i hope it doesn't fire up again. teh flammable crap is still inside and it makes me nervous now. i told the 8 year-old that the heat caused what ever was in there to catch fire, and that they should keep that stuff in there is this weather. he said but they have no where else to put it, and i told him, that they could put it in a pile on the ground until they're able to supervise the fire. he did comment that that it never happened before in all the couple years that they've had it. i said that's probably true, but it also hasn't been this hot out and that it still not safe to keep combustables in there.

when i told his dad what happened his reply was, "you should've just let it burn...." and was trying to be funny when he continued with "you ruined my plan to burn the place down"... let me add that was refering to the amount of work they have to put into the place versus the amount of insurance money they'd probably get. it bothered me that he wasn't more concerned. do i sound like a safety nazi?