Golfer Starts Fire

It has been claimed that a golfer managed to start a wildfire in California with his club. It is thought that his golf club managed to strike a rock as he was aiming to hit the ball, which sparked and caused the start of a serious fire. He was trying to hit his ball out of the rough, which obviously had hidden stones in it, when the incident happened. The stone must have acted like a flint and when the metal struck it, produced a spark and then set fire to some of the very dry and tinder-like vegetation near by. The ground was extremely dry, as was the rest of this area of California and wildfires are common in this part of the USA at this time of the year due to the dry weather conditions. This particular fire spread across 12 acres of ground along the edge of the Shady Canyon golf course, where the person was playing. The ground was a dense forest on a hill, which was obviously very dry and the fire would have spread very easily through all of the vegetation there.

Fire fighters were, of course, called to deal with the blaze and it took about 150 of them in all to dampen down the fire and prevent further spreading. They then took time to interview people in the area, as well as those at the golf course, in order to ascertain what the cause of the fire was as unfortunately many fires are started on purpose. When they discovered that it was caused accidentally by the golfer they did not prosecute him, realising that it was not something which could have had any malicious intent. They did report that they have never before had to respond to a fire caused by a golf club before.