It's a rare happenstance but there are times in the game during a thunderstrom where a lightning strikes renders fire and the rain stops before it puts the flames out.

The last time this happened to me was years ago and the fire spread because of this condition but also because the sims in residence were at work and most of the yard burned down before they could come home and call the fire department. There were two fatalities of NPC passerbies.

This time, fire struck around 4:00 am and the sims were asleep but could call the fire department, and they did but in a matter of moments the fire reached to an
inferno because the lawn was covered in weeds. One side of the yard that was once a nicely landscaped shrubbery by Triciamanly was rendered into many piles of ash and the blaze took five in-game hours to put out with the help of two brave firefighters and the dad in the house. He caught fire twice but thankfully was extinguished by the firemen. It was a long, nail-biting morning as the flames spread down the yard and if those weeds hadn't connected the far hedges to the ones next to the house, I'm sure it could have been contained quicker.



So this is a friendly public service message to call your local gardener or set aside a few hours every weekend to at least pull your weeds!

Why does nothing exciting like this happen in my game.

I had no idea that Maxis-weeds could catch on fire! It makes sense that they are so dangerous. It is a proven fact that homes in the mountains with well-maintained yards (ie: no weeds, dead bushes or dry brush within 200 feet of the house) are much more likely to survive a forest fire.

You probably are a responsible simmer who maintains lawn care.

Yikes! Shouldn't have laughed as hard as I did!

Love the one fireman in the 5th image - he is just sort of standing there. It does all look fairly overwhelming. Will definitely be sure to keep my sims gardens in order...well my sims will that is. They are not allowed to hire service NPC's for anything.

OMG this is so Great to look at, I never see this in my game because I have a Mod " Perfect Garden" @Charmful thanks for sharing your pictures.

How hilarious and frightening at the same time

Man, if you think that's bad, I've had all the landscaping I did for a house burn down and thensome thanks to a more dangerous fire mod. I thought I was actually going to lose the sim because I've lost families to fire but luckily she didn't get scorched.

I love how the dad comes out and fights fire in his pyjamas. XD

Oh wow..your pictures are so amazing @Charmful !
I wonder how you got to that point, regarding the weeds...I never saw so many! You must have a tone of dogs peeing outside.

Dang Steffyn, the road was on fire...and it caught fire in the snow too! I would say that is definitely a more dangerous fire mod when that can happen! I've had sims perish in fires before, too - very nerve wracking hoping they don't die. I have a mod that allows sims to not be so dumb and actually help extinguish so that's the only reason I let the Dad emerge to help.

@Risebine
Reasons for so many weeds:
1. The parents were to busy to do yardwork and neglected to hire a gardener the entire time since they have moved in. To give an idea of how long it's been, they moved in with an infant who is now midway through child-aged.
2. They are a very 'stray-friendly' home and leave out food and even have a dog house and a chewy bone in hopes a stray dog might 'adopt' them so it's entirely possible that that there's animals urinating everywhere, I just never noticed.
3. The cracked rock looking terrain around the poll is all ground cover so the weeds still grow on it, so there's a lot of technical lawn space though it doesn't look like it.

@Simonut
You're welcome and a perfect garden sounds like most responsible thing I could do now after this experience. Is that a mod from this site?

I actually like the unpredictable nature of a super dangerous fire, but I also have realistic sickness so it's tough being a sim in my neighborhoods lmao! Like, it's pretty rare for them to make elderhood lately so when they do they're pretty pampered for making it so far.

Many of my households are also stray-friendly. Like you, I have pet bowls, and pet toys etc...but I never saw a stray pee on a lot. They dig holes yes, but it seems that they need to actually be living there to..urinate there.

Lol, I heard about this in chat today. You know if you ever have a fire that you really want gone simply enable buy/build, put moveobjects on and delete each fire, they are objects.

Sometimes I wonder if I should remove the fire alarms from my Sims' houses Awesome pics!

I've had infernos like that in game before. They go on for hours, the fire department is usually one exhausted crew when they leave.
Usually the homeowner has simply no heart for cleaning up the incredible mess that comes with such an event, and afterwards it's up to others (such as a pixel-god) to delete all the ashes from the lot.
Tedious it is, but with a nice side effect-those ashes are worth $1 each and you can really clean up in more ways than one when a massive blaze breaks out.

But because in Pixel Land fire does not affect the house itself, you must lock the homeowners in the structure lest they be lured outside to gawk helplessly (and usually fatally) while the inferno is raging. They appear to not notice it when you do that. Just a minor inconvenience.

PS-once this event starts, it spreads all over the lot-I've lost every single piece of road before-nearly everything on the surface is flammable...including the Simblender-really! (the batbox and lot sync timer appear to be immune to fire.)

...I am going to do my best to make this happen in my game...

Phew! That was horrific. It makes me thankful that I downloaded Squinge's No More Fires mod years ago, so I should never risk having to watch that in my own game. I don't think my nerves could stand it. A real life fire of that intensity could easily spread to the house and to adjoin properties. In those circumstances fatalities would not be unlikely. If something like that ever did happen in my game, I fear I might end up a casualty myself. Thank you Squinge for keeping my Sims -- and myself! -- safe!

I feel sorry for the firemen. They look totally exhausted.

Was he supposed to get dressed first?

Not sure I would.

This dad is so over the top. Like he works in the SCIA so he thinks he can do anything. He woke up and came outside because you know, what's the point of getting dressed if he's just going to have to have a long shower afterward if he doesn't die? Anyway, he had an infant and a child-aged daughter inside he was trying to protect so there was this urgency of 'screw clothes, I just need to get out there and stop this fire'

On my end it was kind of difficult to juggle monitoring this inferno and having the mother take care of the infant at the same time.



Yes! I had to god-mode the cleanup and even then there were bits of lingering fire animations I couldn't grab and had to leave the lot and come back to make them go away BUT this family did make a nice 70 simoleons at least off the ashes.

your fire was so intense you had TWO firemen
/edits/make that three

All right.
*Stops pulling weeds from lawns and hopes something like this happens*.

As long as nobody dies, it seems rather entertaining.

Oh, I have learned one thing about fires-if a massive fire breaks out, and one of the inhabitants is at work or school, be ready to teleport them into the house immediately when they come home. Otherwise there will be fatalities because those pixels do not understand they're not going to put it out by screaming, jumping and running all over the lot while it's on fire. The firemen do not like to be interfered with, either. They have more important things to do..
I lost a pixel that way-she just came home after the fire broke out, and for gameplay, I let her die in the fire..but otherwise her husband (who was safely inside) did not notice her until after she was an urn on the lot. I guess I should have gotten her inside, but it happened far too quickly to change much..

Perfect Plants and Perfect Gardens is by TwoJeffs and is on Simbology here http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=13.0

I really should not have read this post while eating.