The Combustible Cottonwood
In the quiet little town of Fernley, where the desert wind whispers secrets to the sagebrush and a man can still lose a whole afternoon arguing with a fence post, the North Lyon County firefighters got called out one Friday afternoon to settle a dispute no reasonable soul would have predicted. Right near the Legacy Trails subdivision off Farm District Road, a standing cottonwood tree had taken it into its wooden head to set itself on fire.
Now, a cottonwood is ordinarily a peaceable citizen—tall, shade-giving, and about as ambitious as a Sunday nap. Yet it stood there, flames licking its insides and dancing merrily around its roots like a group of particularly enthusiastic Methodists at a revival.
The firefighters arrived, took one look at this botanical arsonist, and concluded that the only way to persuade the tree to stop burning was to chop the confounded thing down. They did so with solemn efficiency, and before the blaze could go shopping for neighboring weeds or nearby houses, they had it thoroughly extinguished.
The surrounding vegetation and the houses remained unharmed, which is more than can be said for the tree’s dignity. As for the cause, that remains under investigation—an investigation that will no doubt involve earnest men scratching their heads, measuring ash, and eventually concluding that the tree could not resist the temptation to make a spectacle of itself. In these modern times, even the vegetation has learned the value of publicity.
Meanwhile, the North Lyon Fire District recently struck it rich—not by discovering silver, as any sensible pioneer might have done, but by applying for a government program with a name longer than a preacher’s Sunday sermon: the Nevada Rural Health Transformation Program. They hauled in more than $639,000 worth of gleaming machinery.
A brand-new ambulance rolled in, followed by a Quick Response Vehicle that looked ready to outrun trouble itself, two mechanical chest-thumpers called LUCAS devices (which, I reckon, do the hard work of pounding life back into a body so the living can keep their soft hands free for paperwork), a Power-LOAD cot that lifts patients like a polite butler, and a MedBank system for keeping track of medicines that might otherwise wander off like unsupervised children. Officials declared this a mighty step toward high-quality prehospital care for residents and visitors alike.
Nothing improves rural healthcare quite like outside money that spares the local taxpayer the inconvenience of digging into his own pocket. The district, which already races to every sort of medical calamity from heart attacks to heat strokes, now possesses tools so advanced they practically diagnose the patient before the engine cools.
One cannot help but smile at the irony: a fire department, born to put out flames, now flourishes as a traveling hospital on wheels, thanks to a transformation program that changes little more than the size of its inventory. In Fernley, it seems, the surest path to salvation is a well-worded grant application and the quiet hope that the next emergency arrives after the new equipment has been properly photographed for the newspapers.
