08/23/23 September 6th, 2010 was A Very Bad Day for Us

David Kruse and Matthew Kruse   We have been to Lahaina on Maui and can relate somewhat to their recent wildfire catastrophe.  Most people cannot fathom how quickly a wildfire can spread and neither could the people living there.  Many people incorrectly assume they can outrun it. There were reports of the fire jumping at roughly 1 mile each minute.  An Olympic runner could not do that on their best day.   We maintain a jar of burnt cotton in the office as a solemn reminder of what may rank as the worst day of our lives. It is a painful remembrance of the charred result of a wildfire in Bahia, Brazil back in 2010. We had just finished harvesting what was a successful cotton crop that was being processed through our gin on the farm designated as Iowa III. Cotton was compressed into modules at that time instead of the bales seen more prevalently used today. As is standard procedure, some modules were still in the fields where they were made but many had been assembled into a large group of modules in close proximity to the gin site so would be handy to move into the gin. Cotton…