My turn to give this dead horse a couple of whacks!

I have more experience burning documents than all but a small handful of
others on this List.  While in the Marines I was responsible for my unit's
monthly burn of classified documents for nearly a year in Vietnam and CONUS.
Sometimes we spent days wadding it and stuffing it into burn bags and
sometimes we just threw bundles into the flames.  We used burn cages,
55-gallon drums, and finally an incinerator.  It was hot, dirty,
time-consuming, and inefficient.

When I came to Harris County in 1988, however, I found an efficient way to
burn paper:  trench burners.  The Flood Control District always had a large
quantity of logs and brush to dispose of.  They did so by digging relatively
deep trenches large enough to accommodate entire trees and installed a very
large blower at one end.

It worked great.  I was able to throw entire boxes into the trench among the
logs and branches and watch it all burn.  From time to time the crew would
start up the blower to scatter the ashes fan the flames.  And when Flood
Control was finished with the pit they would fill it in with dirt.

And this came to a screaming halt when someone actually read their burn
permit.

The bottom line is that for paper, shredding-and-recycling or pulping are
currently the only ways to go.

Paul R. Scott, CA, CRM
Records Management Officer
Harris County, TX

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance