That’s what I was going to ask about. You said at the start of this that your neighbors bought the house and land with the intention of destroying the house and building a new one. I just wasn’t sure how a controlled burn, practice fire, whatever you call it, was going to aid in that. From the way people have described it here, firefighters do these practice runs so they can, y’know, practice putting out a fire. As in, the house is not going to burn to the ground and be reduced to ashes. And correct me if I’m wrong, but houses rarely burn literally to ashes anyway. There are always components that take longer to burn than others, or don’t burn at all.
So what were the neighbors going to do after the controlled burn? Bring in a demolition crew to knock down what remained of the house? And they’re still planning to demolish the house some other way. This is gonna be so fun for you, no matter how it goes down (pardon the expression). I see a Pit thread in your future, and you have my sympathies.
In the burns I’ve been involved with, at some point the training stops and we let the house burn. There’d still be a fair amount of clean-up left, though.
Yup. Set up a few room and contents burns to simulate what we most often encounter, and want members to confidently/competently handle when there isn’t a life risk, and once they’ve been extinguished, let it rip so noobies on the pump panel can become more fluent with hydraulic calcs.
Well, call me wacky, but I want my volunteer firefighters fully trained with the most experience possible. While there is some risk that a “controlled burn” can get out of control, the benefits to the training of the firefighters is far outweighed. Good on your local VFD for looking for the opportunity to train their staff to it’s utmost.
After incidents like this, how can anyone seriously argue that controlled burns are justifiable? Most experts agree that the problem in our forests is the firefighters have done their job too well. The forests aren’t ever allowed to have normal fires, fuel builds up, so when there is a fire it is devastating. Trees that would survive a natural fire are incinerated. Natural barriers that would stop a ground fire are breached by the intense crown fires that spread embers hundreds of yards in the air.
“Controlled” burns are not the solution however. The problem is too much fuel in the forest. The damage has been done. Manual fuel removal on the forest floor is the answer, but it is much harder and less fun than torching the place, I guess.
I am not the only (well, now former) mountain dweller to feel this way. Of course we don’t get any say in all this because the fire guys are the “experts”, and if someone’s house burns down, what the hey. The government will pay out damages at taxpayer expense and the incompetent schmuck that started the “controlled” burn probably won’t even lose his job. Sure, we appreciate all you do, but it is time for another tactic.
I was fortunate that the guys were able to get the fire near my house under control before property was lost, but it came damn close. Never again. I am now a confirmed flatlander.
Sorry if I don’t trust “controlled” burns. Sorry if I don’t trust firefighters, or in fact most public sector workers in general to be especially competent, but that is what I have observed in the past.
I will leave the pit thread in response to my remarks as testimony to the mentality of many firefighters. “Har har, I’d like to give him an enema with my firehose,” etc. Real mature stuff, that.
In this very thread I proposed establishing safe controlled training facilities that could both improve training and eliminate all danger to the public. I was pooh-poohed by somebody because it would cost too much. When I consider all the money government wastes on functions that are completely illegitimate (IMHO), spending money for this sort of thing should be the first priority of government, not the last.
Instead, the politicians use you guys as the first sacrifice, and while billions flow down the rathole, every time they want to raise our taxes they all bleat “essential services like fire and police could be slashed!” God forbid we should defund the lesbian/chicano studies center or the Jesus in a jar of urine arts grant! I mean the Mayor of Chicago has to have a “green” roof on city hall for cryinoutloud! Never mind if it will never pay back the cost in dollars or energy, it’s green I tells ya! Maybe they will have a brush fire up there. Or they could cut out the middleman and burn the money directly…
Like I said, we’re comparing apples and oranges. You’re talking about a forest fire that got out of control due to unpredicable weather, the OP is asking about a house burning. Two very different things.
Oh, please. Are you trying to tell me that there’s no goofy joking around in other work enviroments? People in office settings never embed staplers in Jello or photocopy their asses? Yeah, right. Do a search here for “practical jokes” and “coworkers.”
And I told you that most municipalities do have safe training facilities, but they’re built out of concrete and steel so they can be used again and again and again. A house burning gives firefighters a chance to practice on something ‘real.’
It’s very different when you know you’re completely safe in the burn building, and when you’re in a real house and the floor or ceiling could give way, or you haven’t memorized the layout of the rooms from being in there so much. We did so much practical work in the burn building, I had the exact layout of the rooms memorized and could find my way around, even when we went in ‘blind’ (with our masks blacked out). It would be a good training exercise to practice in an unknown enviroment.
I completely agree. But let’s take the OP’s case (orange poster?). I still wouldn’t want this happening next to my house. No one has answered the question I asked way upthread- “If this was your house, would you at least put the family photos in your car before the proceedings?” If the answer is no, then fine. If the answer is yes, then you are admitting there is a chance this sort of thing could get out of control.
I have only worked for any length of time in two places. In one of the places (academe) such behavior among the faculty/staff would have been considered very uncool and unseemly and would have resulted in a “quiet dismissal” of the perp, and in the other (dangerous factory setting) such behavior would have resulted in immediate termination for cause due to the dangerous working environment. I liked both policies.
And I am proposing and, now that I think of it, in this “post 9/11 world” (talk about phrases that should be banned but they are talking about that in another thread somewhere here) I can see the logic of establishing sophisticated training facilities, not just for firefigheters but for all first responder types. Make five or six potemkin villages that can serve a multitude of training purposes throughout the country. Put up some different foundations and a framing shop to rebuild the place after each excercise. From what I am getting from this thread, these training burns are not frequent events, so why not just have some of these training centers and every fire unit could spend a worthwhile week there every year. They could have a barracks and a mess, and everything. This would be great for “homeland security” too, if anybody actually gave a darn about that.
I wold like to state that I appreciate the work that all firefighters do, and the risks they take. Having the air around my house filled with smoke with ash raining down was absolutely the most terrifying experience of my life. Walking straight into that hell and battling it’s source is beyond the comprehension of most of us.
That being said, firefighters tend to be macho guys of, well, maybe even slightly above average intelligence although this board does tend to self-select the cream. (Figures I’d encounter the Detective Dietrich of the firefighting world here.) So what is wrong with that? Frankly, I don’t want Professor Frink going through his Riemann equations to determine the average trajectory of the water molecules and the atmospheric drag before he aims the damn hose. He’s too weak to rescue a cat for darn sakes. I want a srong agile self assured and well trained person that can rescue my sorry ass.
As far as those who have written about relatives that have been injured or killed in the line of duty, I only can say that certain people seem to enjoy risky activities, be it mountain climbing or auto racing or standing on ski’s like our govenator. We don’t demonize race car drivers for their love of risk. The fact is, that firefighting satisfies that same need in many folks who pursue it. They went in with their eyes open to the risks and possible consequences, but make no mistake, the very thing that makes the job so tragic at times forms part of the appeal to a lot of the people take those same jobs. This limits my sorrow to a degree. I feel a little sorry for Dale Earnhardt. I feel more sorry for firefighters/police who die in the line of duty, because at least they were doing a more noble service than entertaining and selling Skoal or whatever, but in both cases everyone knew the risks, and pursued their career anyway.
For the record, my grandfather was a cop in Long Beach, my best friend growing up was the son of a policeman who later became a cop himself, and through that family I knew most of the policemen and firefighters in my area. Suffice it to say, these guys didn’t go around quoting Chaucer, and that would be gay anyway. Maybe times have changed since then.
That was one of his suggestions, and not one I have an issue with. Well, the taping part I don’t have an issue with, storing the tape at your lawyer’s office didn’t make sense to me.
He also suggested taping the event, so that you could “catch them in the act” if something went wrong. I felt it would be a colossal waste of your day since if the fire spread to your house, it would be about as clearly the FD’s fault as anything is anyone’s fault.
The fire academy in the county where I live is a sophisticated training facility. It has a big ‘burn building’ where recruits can practice live fire. It also has a flashover simulator that gets regular use.
They also have some mock-ups to practice cutting holes in roof structures and cutting through doors for forcible entry. Those pieces are replaced for each person. When I did it, chopping a hole through the roof was pretty neat - throwing the ladder, climbing it, and chopping a hole through a plywood mockup. But it’s still not the same as a real roof with shingles and sheathing and smoke coming out.
Learning forcible entry was pretty neat, too - bashing in a door, which was then replaced for the next person.
Same for car fires - we got to demolish real cars.
As I said, any vollie station that wants to schedule time at the academy can do so. They’ll get a couple of instructors out there to help and make a day of it.
You’re just not getting it - such facilities do exist.
No, I am talking about a “controlled” burn that got out of control and became a forest fire. Surely you are aware of the facts surrounding this fire? This was a fire that was intentionally set by firefighters and but for a whim of the wind might have burned down the entire Los Alamos National Labarotory thus releasing radioactive contamination that would have rendered a fair swath of land uninhabitable for years and would have resulted in many radiation related deaths among the unlucky who were in the path of the wind’s whim. And quite beside the safety point, such an event would have destroyed vital national security resource.
As Smokey says… Only YOU can prevent forest fires. BY NOT STARTING THEM IN TINDER DRY OVER FUELED FORESTS WHERE UNPREDICTABLE WIND CAN BLOW IN A SEASON WHEN THEY ARE LIKELY TO DO SO. But yeah, firefighters are smarter than the average bear. Just not smarter than Smokey. He was an above average bear, and very cute for sure, but that now that I think of it, the policies he shilled for are the cause of our current crisis.
So how is this more safe than just apprenticing on the job? And again, I joined this thread because the title was lurid, I thought maybe it was a great crazy neighbor story. Instead, and I tell you honestly, I was shocked to find this was a sanctioned exercise. I am being honest when I say that I wouldn’t want this next to my house under most circumstances that I can imagine. And again, how does this get past EPA? I can’t burn a pile of leaves, but you guys can burn a whole house that no matter what, is still full of toxics (plywood etc., see previous posts), and get a clean bill of health?
Maybe I am just paranoid living in SoCal, but one careless action could have utterly disastrous consequences. I was on a movie shoot in the mountains above Malibu. They were shooting an interior and a garden light outside the window was wrecking the shot. Director calls “someone kill that light”. Someone (who was not a grip and had no biz, a grip would use black wrap) threw a “furnie” (furniture blanket :eek: ) over the light. A few minutes later a fire ignites. The ACTRESS in the scene is blocked to be gazing out the window and is the first person to see it. I am convinced that if she hadn’t seen it, it would have been over. If that fire had 30 more seconds, we would have started the forest on fire. It would have been gone. Me and the actor that played the heavy grabbed simultaneous fire extinguishers and quashed it just in time. This was the same week that half of the neighborhood was burning. October 2005 and Woodland Hills was fully engaged. We all got a great view of that one on the way to the shoot. As we went up Malibu Canyon you could see the fire dominating the entire mountain ridge line north across the valley.
The irony of this story is we were running an illegal shoot. We didn’t have FIRE PERMITS and almost got in trouble. The director schmoozed a guy at the FD, and he came out and inspected the set about two hours before the incident and gave us the all clear! :rolleyes: Of course he couldn’t predict the stupidity that ensued so it wasn’t his fault.
Most of the comments in this thread seem relatively unconcerned about the possibility of the fire spreading, and maybe your neighborhood’s vegetation and distance between structures is sufficient to avoid that. But in my neck of the woods, we are deathly afraid of any burning and the first thing I would do if I couldn’t convince the chief to stop is to file a lawsuit and get an injunction.
The last time the fire department did a planned burn around here, it got away from them and burned 80 acres, and that was an open area. In a residential area, that would have been much worse.
In 1871, a “tornado of fire” swept thru not far from here (Peshtigo), even jumped over 20 miles of water, and caused more loss of life than the Chicago fire which was on the same night. Sure, that was natural, and firefighting much more primitive, but it’s a lesson not soon forgotten.
At the very least, there should be a 300-ft buffer zone of plowed dirt on all sides of the structure (more if the structure is higher than a single story); no trees anywhere near; a wind of less than 5MPH expected for the duration, and ample firefighting equipment nearby that can negotiate all kinds of terrain in the area, already hooked up to a constant source of water and firemen with water backpacks. And the ground should not be in a state of drought and dry.
Talk about playing with fire.
If demolition is the end desire, I would think a bulldozer would be safer than a fire, but YMMV.
There is a big difference between a controlled burn of brushwood and using a trashed house as a playpen.
It sounds a pretty sensible idea, half way between a training setup and the real thing.
My only criticism is that they could, and should, have sent someone round to talk to you before the activity started, but I guess they reckon that you are so far away … still they should have.
I’ve always been amused about office fire drills, you are pre-warned and everyone troops out docilely leaving important stuff to ‘burn’. At one place we had a real fire (electrical, smoke, but no flames). People started making last minute backups.
If I had thought it serious, I would have followed my pre-checked out route, up the stairs, onto the roof and across the adjacent buildings ( Central London ).
Real life is not the same as simulations.
I reckon that ‘simulations’ should have a whiff of real danger.
I am amazed at what most workers don’t know about the place they go every workday. Make it a point to explore the stairwells and side exits of anyplace you are going to live or work.
although this board does tend to self-select the cream. (Figures I’d encounter the Detective Dietrich of the firefighting world here.) So what is wrong with that? Frankly, I don’t want Professor Frink going through his Riemann equations to determine the average trajectory of the water molecules and the atmospheric drag before he aims the damn hose. He’s too weak to rescue a cat for darn sakes. I want a srong agile self assured and well trained person that can rescue my sorry ass.