A Florida man is in trouble after some of the fiery pages from one of the books he was burning set off a wildfire in his neighborhood.
Only a few minor injuries to emergency personnel have been reported in what's being called the Garfield Road Fire, according to the Florida Forest Service. But it has burned an estimated 350 to 400 acres near Bryceville, about 20 miles west of Jacksonville.
Officials said in a news conference Thursday morning the wildfire was 65% contained and no longer spreading.
The unidentified man, who I will call “Today’s winner of the world’s worst neighbor award,” wasn’t making any political statements here. He wasn’t trying to rid the world of pagan magic by burning up a bunch of Harry Potter stories. No, he was illegally taking out the trash.
“It wasn’t malicious, it wasn’t arson, it was an accident,” Annaleasa Winter, a spokesperson for the fire service, told Gizmodo. “But [the man who started the fire] was devastated. There’s a lot of heavy timber in that area and the wind took it.”
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When asked if there were any political or religious reasons for the book burning, Winter said that it looks like the man who set the fire was just trying to get rid of things he didn’t want.
While book burning for political reasons is dumb and dangerous for a few reasons, burning books in general is also dumb and dangerous.