On July 7th, fire chief Chris Kocher at the Worland, Wyoming volunteer fire department received a phone call alerting him of a “blue glow” in a rural area off Highway 20 North. As soon as he arrived onsite and looked at the blazing area through binoculars, “I saw we had a sulfur fire,” Kocher tells The Verge. 
 
 The fire looked like a carpet of sparkling blue blaze. In a video posted by the fire department on Facebook — which has been viewed almost 2 million times — you can see flames moving quickly across the surface, sometimes raising up into the air. It’s mesmerizingly beautiful — and also really dangerous. If you breathe the smoke, it can harm your lungs and even kill you. 
 
 like a carpet of sparkling blue blaze 
 
 When sulfur burns, it produces sulfur dioxide, a harmful gas that forms sulfurous acid when it comes in contact with water, including the moisture in your lungs. Sulfurous acid is related to acid rain, which can kill trees and fish. To keep safe, the firefighters at the scene were wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus, which is why in the video you can hear a Darth Vader-ish breathing noise (as The Washington Post points out). 
 
 Putting down a sulfur fire isn’t the same as dealing with a regular fire: in fact, the crew used only a small amount of water from the fire truck plus firefighting foam. That way, the temperature of the sulfur could be cooled down below 309 degrees Fahrenheit — when it’s in a molten stage — so that a crust formed at the surface. “And then the fire’s out,” Kocher says. The whole thing took about 20 minutes. 
 
 accidentally ignited by the exhaust of a motorcycle 
 
 The sulfur mound is leftover from the Texas Gulf Sulfur Plant, which operated north of Worland in the 1950s. The sulfur is mixed heavily with soil, the Facebook post says. It’s not 100 percent sulfur concentrate, but it’s still highly flammable. The 10,000-square-foot area that went ablaze Friday night was accidentally ignited by the exhaust of a motorcycle, Kocher says. The area hadn’t seen a sulfur fire in about 12 years, but the crew was prepared because there are a lot of oil fields around Worland, so the firefighters know how to deal with sulfur dioxide. 
 
 As for the viral video, Kocher says he was surprised to see all the media attention. You don’t see a bluish blazing field every day, and that’s probably what got people hooked. “It’s interesting to see how far the video has traveled,” he says. ||||| WORLAND, Wyo. (AP) — If you ever wondered what a burning pile of sulfur looks like, the answer is like a UFO crash site or maybe a scene on another planet. 
 
 Firefighters in Worland, Wyoming, say it wasn't a UFO but the hot exhaust of an off-road motorcycle that ignited an old pile of sulfur Friday night. 
 
 As seen in this video , the sulfur burned with bizarre effects: A blue carpet of flame topped by twisting orange columns of fire. The fire gave off sulfur dioxide gas and firefighters wore breathing equipment to stay safe. 
 
 It happened at the former site of a sulfur plant. Worland Volunteer Fire Department Chief Chris Kocher says nobody was hurt or cited for causing the fire. 
 
 Kocher says crews got the fire under control within 20 minutes.
– It's not often you hear firefighters describe a blaze as "beautiful," but that's exactly what happened following a fire in Worland, Wyo. In a Facebook post accompanying a video that has since gone viral, the Worland Volunteer Fire Department explains it was called to "an unknown type of fire" on Friday and was met with stunning blue and orange flames. But though beautiful, the blaze covering a 10,000-square-foot area resembling "a UFO crash site" was also highly dangerous, per the AP: A sulfur mound left over from a former sulfur plant had been ignited by the exhaust of a motorcycle, sending sulfur dioxide into the air. While water is usually a firefighter's primary line of defense, water combined with sulfur dioxide creates sulfurous acid. Fortunately, "the fire was burning in a 'bowl'-shaped area, allowing all runoff to be collected in the fire area. A minimal amount of water was used to cool the surface of the sulfur and reduce the temperature below the molten stage," the department says. A crust then formed on the surface of the sulfur, extinguishing the fire, reports the Verge. Firefighters, equipped with special breathing equipment, had the blaze under control in just 20 minutes. The fire chief adds no one was injured.