Helotes Mulche Fire is out after three months

Much ado about 'Mulchie'

Anton Caputo
San Antonio Express-News

Call it the Paris Hilton of burning debris. Helotes' own "Mulchie" has received more ink, video time and cyber chatter than can possibly be explained by its impact on the small Hill Country community or any arguable news value to the story.

Truth is, there's not really much to see at the great Helotes mulch fire anymore. The eight-story mountain of flame and smoke has been pretty well dismantled, leaving crews to dig into its subterranean bowels to douse what remains of the blaze.

But at its height, the fame of the fire that has been pouring smoke throughout Helotes since Christmas burned even brighter than its flames.

Newspapers throughout the country and as far away as the United Kingdom carried accounts of the fire. National Public Radio ran the story. And, of course, for several weeks running it seemed you couldn't pick up a copy of the Express-News or turn on a local news broadcast without getting a bellyful of the thing.

But it's really in cyberspace where the legend of the smoldering mound blossomed and lives on. Through numerous blogs, Web sites and a couple of fashion lines, the once-burly pile of mulch, limbs, debris and dirt has secured a tabloidish sort of fame and seemed to spawn a life of its own.

There's the personal page on MySpace.com, where "friends" first dubbed the pile "Mulchie" and opine in pun-filled terms about the life and now near-death of their inanimate comrade. There's a more serious page on facebook.com, where college students across the state swap news and stories about the thing. And there's more. Lots and lots more.

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..PHOTO STARTS HERE--> ..> ..PHOTO ENDSTARTS HERE-->..> (John Davenport/Express-News) Though there's no longer much to see at the site of the Helotes mulch fire, it once was this eight-story mountain of flame and smoke.

Kym Fox, who teaches journalism at Texas State University, said she can't quite figure out why "Mulchie" has become so popular. But she said it's got the peculiar characteristics of stories that seem to take off on the Web in a manner that communications specialists and cyber junkies now term "viral" — because they seem to spread like a virus.

There's the serious edge of the health hazards posed to the people of Helotes and the pollution danger to the Edwards Aquifer. Then there's the quirky story line of a burning pile of mulch and debris that just won't seem to go away. In some ways, Fox equates the draw to that of a B-rated horror film — both goofy and horrific. She likens it to another odd San Antonio story, that of "Thong Man," who gained national notoriety and prompted significant cyber chatter by bicycling around San Antonio in a thong before committing suicide in 2003.

"Sometimes things strike our fancy and we just can't let it go," Fox said.

That's what happened to Michael Hovan, who created the spoof Web site TheMulchFire.com after watching events unfold for several weeks. He said the situation was just too ripe not to spoof.

"It's an 80-foot-high heaping pile of twigs and debris," he said. "Evidently there are feces in this pile of trash and this thing just continued to accumulate and accumulate and wouldn't, you know, the thing goes and catches on fire and we couldn't deal with it. It's just a very strange thing."

Hovan's site includes a number of poems about the mulch pile submitted by visitors as well as spoof interviews and, of course, a list of solutions.

The list, which contains serious and not-so-serious suggestions, is topped by an animation and description of what is touted as the only real solution to the problem — bringing in aging martial artist and television celebrity Chuck Norris to kick the hell out of the mulch pile. Ironically, many of the Google ads that appear on the site market mulch, which makes Hovan chuckle.

Beyond the silliness, Hovan argues that there is a more serious aspect to the mulch fire that seems to have hit a nerve, especially among people with a penchant for satire. That's the perceived incompetence of government to deal with the blaze.

Patsy Robles Benitez, a San Antonio-based independent video producer who shot one of the popular videos of the raging fire that has been carried on YouTube and other video sites, has a similar point of view.

"I think it kind of showed a lot of ineptitude in government," she said. "You look at this and then you wonder what's going to happen if some big catastrophe happens."

Fair or not, that perception was fostered early on by confusion and drama over how to fight the fire and who was responsible for doing so. Questions also quickly emerged about how such a massive pile could have been allowed to accumulate.

The state soon took over the firefighting role and contracted with a specialized company at a price that Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokesman Terry Clawson said will top $3 million. But efforts stalled twice when firefighting-related pollution — including fecal bacteria — was found in nearby wells that tapped into the Edwards Aquifer.

A few miles north of the pile in another Helotes hot spot — the Helotes Country Club — patrons have their own take on the attention and media coverage: They're sick of it.

The "Country Club" is a smoky joint where the décor is dominated by deer heads, bawdy bumper stickers and an assortment of hammers, drill bits and other hardware hanging thick from the low ceiling. It's the type of place where everyone seems to know everyone and wearing something resembling a tie might get you tossed out.

Opinions are voiced often and loudly, but on this one topic, the regulars seem to speak with one voice.

"It's just a big hype out of little Helotes," said Tammy Pointon, whose father owns the bar. "Let it burn and let it go away."

But if people such as Hovan have anything to say about it, it seems unlikely that the mulch fire's fame will die any time soon.

"I'm going to leave it (the site) up forever," he said.