I don’t understand how this can possibly be legal. Homes contain a myriad of toxic substances, from PVC to chemically treated lumber to god knows what all. You can’t just burn that kind of stuff in an open fire! The EPA would have a fit. This sounds like an EXTREMELY stupid plan and if it was next to my house I would be doing everything up to and including a court injunction to prevent it.
Oh, and as far as trusting authorities, here in California it seems like half of the forest fires are started by “controlled” burns.
I have no reason to believe that firefighters are very smart, and many reasons to believe they are actually dumber than the average bear. Valedictorians don’t sign up for a job that is more dangerous than police work and virtually guarantees an early death due to lung disease/cancer. Firefighters tend to be the macho/jock/dumbass type, and are capable of acting every bit as foolishly as anyone else. They do dumbass things all the time, like putting dog food in each other’s food. These are the guys you are going to trust with all the belongings you hold dear, not to screw up?
IMHO, firefighters should practice this sort of thing at a dedicated facility where all conditions can be controlled, or get the practice they need fighting real fires that arise.
You haven’t lived until you are told that you need to decide which of all your belongings you are going to cram in you car and that you need to GET OUT NOW as the smoke streams up the canyon toward your town. Controlled burn my shiny metal ass!
Nice way to thank the folks who may put their life on the line for your “shiny metal ass”. Hope no firefighter you ever need has read your opinion of them.
i am a bit concerned about the plans for the new house involving your property. have you spoken to the zoning board or l&i? will you be charging rent for their use of your property?
Please tell your husband that I suggested a keg party…not no namby-pamby hot chocolate and marshmallow thing. 
As a bribe, I’ll offer more song nominations:
Light My Fire–The Doors
Hotter than Hell—KISS
Ring of Fire—Johnny Cash
Rock of Ages–Def Leppard
Free Bird–Lynyrd Skynyrd (a perfect song for any event)
Thanks for your appreciation. While I have no college degree, I have devoted over half my life (33+ years and counting) to the fire service, and continuing education at a local, state and national level in an effort to do my job safely, and properly direct/train those men and women I supervise.
I’m a macho/jock/dumbass who appreciates his little girl, music, art, literature, and cooking, yet I’ve never used Alpo in a recipe. Recruited by the son of my department’s only member to die in the line of duty, I’m driven by a purpose to which you’re evidently disinterested, that being putting others ahead of self.
You’re right-I do dumbass things all the time, such as serving my community, working as the Executive Officer of a company with millions of dollars in assets, managing a taxpayer funded budget of a half-million, writing grant applications, promoting fund-raisers, and other stupid stuff.
On behalf of the ~100 members of my brother/sisterhood whose names are cast in bronze each year and remembered at Emmitsburg, I’m sorry we haven’t lived up to your expectations.
Well, call me wacky, but I think firemen should put out fires, not start them. There is no such thing as a “controlled burn”. There are only burns that they are lucky enough to be able to control, and then there are the ones that get away. How many homes must we lose so these guys can indulge their pyromania? Winds shift. Plans go awry. Why take the chance?
Another idiocy we have here is the “red flag alert” when fire danger is high. Who are we supposed to be alerting? Firefighters? They already know. Perhaps your friendly neighborhood arsonist? Of course frequently we find that they are one in the same.
They already know because of the Red Flag Warning.
St. Urho
Wildland Firefigher
This firefighter/EMT has read his opinion. Thanks for thinking so highly of us, Happy Wanderer. :rolleyes:
I’m not the macho/jock/dumbass type at all. I have a college degree, and I work two jobs. At one, I take care of little kids, and at the other I take of sick people.
Most of the firefighters at my station are as smart as the next person, and I’d trust them with my life - I have to.
I’ve never seen anyone put dog food in anyone else’s food. Sure, they play pranks on each other, but not like that.
We can get practice at a facility dedicated to this type of thing, but it’s a concrete and steel building - it’s not quite the same a real house made of wood and plaster. As I said before, they don’t just set the whole house a’blazing and go at it like idiots. It’s carefully controlled. There are always other firefighters around with charged hoselines, ready to step in, just in case something goes wrong.
They do one room or small area at a time. After each burn, they make sure the fire is completely out before moving on to another one. The training is invaluable.
You want us to wait and get our ‘practice’ on real fires? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Death due to lung cancer isn’t like it used to be, unless you’re dumb enough to smoke. The gear we have now is made to protect us. When all our gear is on properly, we’re completely covered. Not one bit of skin shows, and you’re on air and safe.
NFPA 1971 codes require our turnout gear to meet certain standards for safety. We have to be fit-tested every year, to make sure our face pieces fit correctly. It ain’t like the old days.
I could go on, but this isn’t the Pit. I’m not allowed to use that kind of language or tell you what I really think outside of the Pit.
Fine, but must it lead the Eyewitless news whenever there is one? I mean, here in So Cal, if you have to be told not to throw your cig out the window, you probably aren’t tuning in the nightly news. Everybody knows this, every mountain road has signs warning of fire danger. Let it be a private alert level and leave the scaremongers at the local live at five to cover the latest celeb divorce or whatever.
Um, something firefighters are much more likely to do than the general population. And what’s with the whole '70’s porn 'stache thing so many of y’all are sporting? Listen, if I come off a little pissed, I was motivated to sell my beautiful home in the mountains because of the antics of these guys. Controlled burn one minute, “GATHER WHAT YOU CAN TAKE AND GET OUT NOW” over the PA the next. Puhhlease. The fact is, that fire is unpredictable. I think they even have a saying about playing with it. Go play next to someone else’s house. Between the bark beetle, natural causes and the occasional nutjob we have plenty of fire to deal with here. Yet I guarantee we will continue to hear the phrase “the fire started as a controlled burn that got out of control” over and over again, at least once or twice each fire season.
And what about toxics? Even the wood frame may have wood treated with cyanide compounds. What if the wind shifts while they are doing this and the OP gets a home covered with soot containing cyanide and God knows else, or are your rocket scientist firefighters going to be monitoring the atmosphere with doppler radar to eliminate the chance that a microburst cause a sudden breeze or shift in wind that will leave or dear OP with a toxic mess all over his house? This sounds like a bad plan, laden with opportunites for unanticipated circumstances and the inevitable results of human hubris. The designers of the Titanic were very sure it couldn’t sink, y’know.
Happy Wanderer, instead of repeating the writings of my comrades BiblioCat, St Urho, and danceswithcats, I’ll just go on record with agreeing 100% with what they’ve already said. Anything I could add would just be pit-worthy, and really not worth typing.
As for credentials, I was valedictorian of my school in college. Granted, there were only 180 of us from our school graduating, but still, I’m pretty happy about that. I’m working on my masters of fire protection engineering, but you know, any ol’ joe can pick one of them up out of a cracker jack box. On top of that, I’ve been a firefighter for 17 years. I tend to think I have an idea of how this career works.
I’m certified, nationally, to teach firefighters how to do their job and not be killed or injured. I’m authorized by my state to conduct live fire training, either in purpose-built live burn facilities or in acquired structures. I’ve conducted numerous flammable liquid training fires, the kind you only see with large air carrier aircraft crashes. But I guess I’m just reckless.
For the record, there are more police officers annually killed in the line of duty then firefighters. We usually lose about 100, law enforcement usually tops out around 150.
You seem concerned about wild fires in the western part of our country. Its interesting, as the rest of us look out west and question why, after centuries of fires have been rolling through the canyons and up the hillsides, anyone would build, then rebuild, homes in that area? If you want to throw the “dumbass” comment towards those who have dedicated their lives to protecting others, I’d look inward first.
I apologize in advance to the Mods if I’ve crossed a Pit boundary.
**KCB615-**Why does no-one address the issue of toxics? Are you saying that every last bit of PVC piping, plastic insulation, treated lumber, formica counter, epoxy bathtub, and the list goes on and on from flooring materials to lead paint to I can’t even think there are so many things that produce nasty combustion products that go into building a house. Wouldn’t it just be easier to go out on a dry lake or somewhere remote where there is nothing combustable around and slap up a mockup house to burn down that could be made to omit dangerous substances? This would be safer for the firefighters and would have no potential liability involved, not to mention ruining someone’s life. Suzanne Somers may call being burned out of her house a “learning experience” but I call it the worst thing that can happen to a person outside of the death of a loved one.
Are you saying there is ZERO chance something could go wrong with this? Would you feel comfortable if this was going down next to your house? You wouldn’t box up the family photos and have them in the trunk just in case? I damn sure would, and that would only be after my attorney had exhausted every legal avenue to prevent it from happening in the first place.
Not exactly understanding why people even bother to refute some posts.
My first time doing this… Cite?
Sounds like you guys are a bunch of pros. :rolleyes: You said it yourself. I wouldn’t want any part of that happening next to me. I would prefer we give you the budget to BUILD reasonable mockups in a remote open area to burn down for training, rather than this kind of thing. It wouldn’t be as expensive as a real house, you could leave out a lot of things. No gold fixtures 'natch. Most of the cost of the house is in the land value anyway and the same low-value plot could be used over and over again. Just a thought.
I guess I assumed that after a formal training course a lot of the training was almost an apprenticeship, observing others, being given increasing responsibility as different tasks are mastered, etc. My police officer friend said it was a lot like that, that after so much practice and classrom that eventually you just had to go on patrol, where most of the real learning takes place. I understand that the jobs are very different. And I am glad you fire guys are finally getting better protection against toxic exposure.
For the benefit of those of us reading along at home. I can’t imagine being in the situation that the OP is in, and I’m probably a little inclined to blind trust of my local public servants. But I find details provided by various experts in firefighting to be fascinating. And so I apreciate the efforts of various firefighters to refute posts and explain their points of view.
I’m at 19 years of professional and volunteer firefighting experience.
I’ve trained in fire towers all over the country. Nothing compares to a real house fire. I now live in a very rural district. We average about one real “working” fire every three years. About every four years we get the chance to do a controlled burn on an empty house. The experience is invaluable.
We have our weekly meetings at 7:00 Mondays after most people are home from work. Here on the East coast that is after dark. That could explain why they are there doing the prep in the dark lately.
We pick a Saturday and light the target on fire and put it out over and over until there is too much damage to safely go in again.
Call the firehall and ask to talk to the Chief or the association President. they will answer all your questions. Or wander over over next time you see them. The crew will be happy to answer all your questions.
I may now be an unpaid volunteer, but I still see myself as a trined professional.
Just don’t ask about the rubber duckie on the dashboard of our pumper truck.
I read about this, I believe, in the LA Times just a couple of years ago, and things like that take time to change. Firefighters used to have astronomical smoking rates and although it has gotten better, they are still more likely to smoke than the GP. I am sure the rate will continue to drop as it continues to do in the GP.
I’m at a very rural fire house, too, and we get an actual fully involved fire once or twice a year. The house burnings are few and far between - we went on two last fall, and that was unusual. One was in our district, and one was somewhat farther away. When you have a house burning in your district, you’re expected to invite all the neighboring companies to join you, both volunteer and paid. There will also be at least one medic crew standing by.
We have a big stuffed frog. When you squeeze him, he croaks.
We say that we throw the rubber duck in the basement window when we get to the house fire.
When it floats out, it’s time to go home.