Ashes to Ashes....

A very well intentioned family cleaned out their fireplace before leaving Kaubashine this morning. I walked past the bucket seeing they had also cleaned out unburned logs and they were in the bucket and did not doing anything with the bucket. It did not get my attention as I saw the bucket was not next to the cabin. We have had fires start from ashe buckets left near cabins smoldering and starting the side of the cabin on fire. Today the bucket smoldered all day and restarted the logs on fire. When I happened upon the bucket on of the logs had burned through and dropped to the ground startign the leaves and needles around it on fire. Never take unburned logs out of the fireplace and leave them in a bucket with hot ashes. We had been hiking all afternoon and away from the resort. We were lucky it did not set the cabin on fire. ALL ASH BUCKETS MUST BE LEFT AWAY FROM THE CABINS AND BY THE GARBAGE CANS! Better yet please do not clean out the ashes, honestly I would rather see the ashes left in the fireplace for us to deal with. The only reason we leave ash buckets around the resort is because if we do not people us brown paper garbage bags (as with Norway Pines this spring where ashes were put in a bag and put on the wood porch where they smoldered through the wood and into the jouices before being caught just in time) or the plastic mop bucket (and put under the kitchen sink where it melts to the linoleum) and that causes even more problems. Ashes have caused more almost fires than I care to think about. Please, please, please be careful, if you must take out your ashes put them in the bucket AWAY from the cabin Better yet if you must take them out and they are hot in pour a bucket of water on them. Many times folks think the ashes are cold or just a few coals in them. It is amazing what happens when they are given time to smolder and a little fuel.