A woman in South Australia who dealt with soiled toilet paper by burning it, was given a two-month suspended sentence for the one-acre bushfire she started near Murphy’s Haystacks last December.
Below is an excerpt from the West Coast Sentinel:
…[Melissa Jane] Carmody was camping for several days near Murphy’s Haystacks, which resulted in a pile of debris forming, which a member of the public became concerned about.
This alerted Ms Carmody to set fire to the pile of toilet paper she had accumulated from not having a bathroom.
“You burnt soiled toilet paper in a situation where you thought that that was something that you ought to do,” Judge [Simon] Stretton said.
“What you should of realised is on that December 2, 2013 you were right in the middle of bushfire season and there is an obvious risk that burning paper outdoors is going to cause a grass fire,” he said.
We are aware of at least four other fires started by the same behavior, and documented three of them here. A fourth was in the 1980s in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in southern California during the annual big horn sheep count. There are other reports of fires with the same cause in George Creek Canyon on the Inyo National Forest in 1979, and the Narrows Fire on the Angeles NF in 1997. (Check out the comments below this article at Wildfire Today.)
