And can I put out one last thing. I would rather die and be eaten by coyotes, never to be seen again, and my disappearance remain a mystery, then be rescued by some helicopter and have my stupidity displayed on Eyewitless News. If I am the “lost hiker” that you are looking for, please leave me to die a real death than the one of embarrassment because I got “lost” in the Angeles National Forest, where at any point, one half day’s decent walk in a straight direction will take you to a Denny’s. Here’s a hint. Go downhill. Thanks.
Firstly, I apologize for responding a day late - I was at work for the past 24 hours, you know, the place all of us macho-types hang around and play cards at while twirling our moustaches.
But I digress.
The live burns I have attended where things have gone wrong only happened in one community, and were done by one person. He no longer has that job. Three fires over four years were not planned correctly, and resulted in property damage to adjacent exposures. None caused injuries, although they did cause rapid reshuffling of resources to deal with the problems.
Here in New England, and for the most part, all of the eastern US, we don’t have the brush fire problem you folks out west have. Live burns conducted out here essentially never leave the structure, and that is a direct result of the planning that goes into one of these fires. About four years ago, a firefighter was killed in upstate New York in an improperly conducted training fire in an acquired structure. For those in the industry that didn’t know there were regulations (NFPA 1403, cited above), it was a slap in the face that there’s a right way to do this. For those of us who were doing them right, it justified that we had our ducks in a row from the start.
You seem quite concerned about the toxins involved in a live burn. Firstly, most of the buildings that are donated for live fire training are old, and by old, I mean usually built before 1950. I’ve worked a live burn in a house built in the late 1700’s. There are no pressure treated materials in those houses, no plywood, and no laminated veneer lumber to release strange combustion products. In any of these buildings, anything that could cause strange or unpredictable fire behavior MUST BE REMOVED before any fire training can take place. That includes wall finishes (wall paper, carpeted walls), floor treatments of any kind except for non-combustible tile (no carpet, linoleum, etc), electrical wiring, plastics of any kind (there’s your acrylic bathtub and PVC piping), and asphalt or composite roofing shingles (prior to the final burn). There can’t be any furiture inside, and the only fuel allowed inside is dry, clean wood (usually pallets used only to transport food), excelsior, or hay that has not been treated with fertilizers or pesticides. Straw cannot be used, as the seed pods have bacteria that will give you pneumonia.
Here in Massachusetts, we have to comply with MGL 48-13, and recieve a permit from the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection prior to burning. DEP will visit your site to make sure you’re not burning stuff that isn’t supposed to be burned.
Regarding the embers being released from these fires, 99% of the time, there aren’t any. Houses don’t burn like that, particularly when all of the contents have been removed. The fire usually takes about an hour. If you’ve ever seen one of these occur (which I’m guessing you haven’t, given your aprehension about a live burn taking place), you’ll see a huge amount of fire apparatus, personnel, hoselines, and in many cases, a couple of aerial ladders around the building. The exterior of the building is kept cool during the fire, allowing the fire to “eat away” the insides of the house, which then collapses into the basement. A quick hit with some heavy water streams when the house collapses stops the “whoosh” of embers. Also, we’ve “cleaned” smoke using hoselines attached to aerial ladders - stick the aerial close to the smoke plume (which isn’t that nasty anyway, since there’s nothing bad to burn and the fire’s going quite hot and clean to begin with), and “wash” the soot and any embers, if there are any, out of the smoke. When the fire’s done, all thats left is a smoking hole in the ground, a bunch of mud around the foundation, and a group of tired firefighters.
All in all, a live burn is a very cost effective method of training a lot of firefighters. A burn building, if you can get the permits to build one, costs anywhere from $3 million to about $14 million. Good luck getting through the environmental impact study to build a new training facility. Imagine having a live burn every day, eight times a day, in the same place, for the next twenty years. That’s if you can get the place built to begin with. Acquired structures are rare to begin with, and you usually get to work in them for a few weeks before the place is burned to the ground. Smaller departments rely heavily on them, and when you get one, you invite all of your neighboring departments to come benefit from them.
Remember, there are about 1.6 million firefighters in the US. There are burn facilities in every state (Massachusetts has five off the top of my head, Rhode Island has one), and they’re booked solid months if not years out. Getting enough purpose-built facilities built to handle all of those firefighters isn’t feasible. Live fire training in acquired structures is a safe, cost-effective solution to training.
Too darn right, and work out the routes other people will not take.
I went up the Kings Cross escalator 30 mins before the fire ( and have convinced myself that I smelt something )
I would have been down a tunnel - crowds are dangerous, keeping ones back against a wall prevents getting tripped. Sloping slideways makes sense.
I almost forgot about the smoking thing:
From the Massachusetts General Laws:
Chapter 41: Section 101A. Police officers or firefighters; tobacco smoking
Section 101A. Subsequent to January first, nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, no person who smokes any tobacco product shall be eligible for appointment as a police officer or firefighter in a city or town and no person so appointed after said date shall continue in such office or position if such person thereafter smokes any tobacco products. The personnel administrator shall promulgate regulations for the implementation of this section.
I disagree with this. You should have the right to smoke outside of the workplace. I am not telling anyone not to smoke. I merely noted it as a historic characteristic of firefighters that they were much more likely to smoke. I knew this before whatever relatively recent article I read, and the article merely confirmed it. If this is no longer true then the firefighting community should be commended for their historic achievement in reducing this horrible habit! I have tried to find cites for this, but dopers should be aware that not every fact is readily findable on the internet. Absence of a cite != not true.
So you are admitting that firefighters can be fallible and things can go wrong. Thank you.
So after all this drastic modification you think you are getting a realistic scenario. Riiiight.
So you are admitting that the training is highly unrealistic. On the one hand you claim that you need these for realism, on the other hand you state that you make the conditions totally unrealistic. Sounds useless to me.
[quote]
The fire usually takes about an hour.
[quote]
just like real fires, they burn on schedule :rolleyes:
Sounds like a realistic scenario. :rolleyes:
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
I bet the Mythbusters could do it for less than 50K. You government types waste money like it is water.
I hope so. As I said in an earlier post, screw the cost. This is now a national security issue. The feds should be shouldering this response. Again, when you think of the money they waste on crap! As long as there is one police officer or firefigher or military person that is shy on single piece of eqiuipment that might make their life safer/better/easier, I can think of a whole bunch of crapola that can be guiltlessly cut from the budget at all governmental levels with no ill effect.
Well, time for bed, but one last thing until later on Saturday. If I was a benign dictator of the US, I would double the budget of every agency with men in uniform, and would cut taxes in half. What other changes enacting this policy this would entail, I will leave for the reader to decipher, but at least the most important functions of government would at last be adequately funded.
Wow.
You complained that you were inconvenienced due to a brush fire, refuse to acknowledge the incredibly difference between brush and structure fires, drop meaningless factoids in the thread and then smile a lying smile and say you appreciate the efforts, etc. etc.
Do you know, for a FACT that the fire that you had to evacuate from was started by a controlled burn?
So far, it seems that the few facts you have tried to spew forth have been refuted by folks with more knowledge of the firefighting workplace and training, often with cites to match.
So, at this point, I’m just going to go on the assumption that your facts are made up and nothing anyone says will sway your mind.
Some other minor things for you to think about:
1- Nothing is every 100% safe. Ever.
2- It appears after some quick googling that lightning strikes cause most fires in souther california, followed by careless people who didn’t get the memo that its a Red Flag season
3- Most firefighters would support a “Hi Opal” here.
4- Firefighters are highly trained, and must continue training until they retire… like doctors and nurses, police, and other exceedingly technical job.
5- Most burn houses are concrete and steel structures with what are essentially big Bunsen Burners that come on to simulate fire. This is nothing like a REAL fire.
6- After removing the toxins and taking safety precautions as stated above, a controlled house burn is still MUCH more realistic for training purposes… otherwise it wouldn’t be done, hundreds of times every year across the country.
And now I’m off to read the pit thread, which should be much more fun.
As much as it pains me to admit this, Happy is correct about the Cerro Grande Fire. From talking to people who were there and reading the fire report, initiating the burn that day was nothing short of negligent.
[Former Forest Service Employee]
That’s what happens when you let put the Park Service in charge.
[/FFSE]
That said, Cerro Grande is FAR from the norm when it comes to prescribed (not controlled) burns.
I’m also curious which burn it was that you were involved with.
KCB is talking about a dedicated fire training facility like this. Not a live burn like was being discussed in the OP.
While I was googling trying to find some cites for increased smoking rates in firefighters, I discovered a bunch of links that suggest NURSES have a higher rate of smoking than the GP. :eek: Talk about folks who should know better.
I visited London in 1980 or so and commented that the wooden escalator looked like a fire hazard. My Stepmpther chastised me. "You say the stupidest things’. Yeah, ok. 
It has been my experience that people take my opinions more seriously if I refrain from throwing out insults willy-nilly.
My last time trying to explain this:
Here’s a burn I helped set up in a neighboring town in September 2001.
Photo 1: The setup. Notice how there’s nothing around the house. We were allowed to leave roofing shingles on the house back in 2001, we are not allowed to now.
Photo 2: After about 15 minutes or so, this is how far the fire has progressed. The fire was lit in the basement, so it will burn up and through the house. I ask you to pay special attention to the number of hose streams that are on the exterior of the building - this is how one keeps the fire inside of a building.
Photo 3: The left side of the house (or the B side, as us macho firefighters call it). Notice the lack of floors or walls inside, that’s because they’re burned away. But there’s still an exterior wall. Hmm.
Photo 4: Just about the end of the fire. We used an excavator to push the walls into the basement. Again, the innards are gone, but the outside remains. How do they do it? Training, experience, and planning. The way any burn has to be conducted.
[walks away, shaking head and sputtering]
Nice pictures, KCB615. Thanks for sharing them.
What she said. From those pix the siding appears to be cedar shakes-if so, that would certainly make for a lively conflagration.
Oh, and by the way, Happy-it’s generally considered good form to have supporting data prior to making an allegation. Googling for it after the fact? :rolleyes:
From that perspective, there appears to be a big tree very close to the house, maybe even touching it. I see from another angle that it is farther away. Still, call me paranoid, but unless that is the only tree for miles and it is raining, it would worry me that it might catch fire all too easily.
I’ve seen it happen all too often (for non-planned fires). Most non-firemen have no idea just how quickly vegetation can burn and fires can spread. Even some firemen don’t know.
About burning your home down on purpose, my darling female birth giver has set the curtains on fire no fewer than 5 times.
She’s got a black belt in cooking. We call her “Flame-o”. The smoke alarm is my dinner bell. I’m livin’ large, baby.