Calling any fire experts for some education on the CA fires

originally posted by: Bhadhidar
A house fire is not, as has been noted, the same as as house caught in a wildfire.

The temperature extremes can be orders of magnitude greater in a wildfire where forest and woody brush are whipped to higher temperatures by stiff, dry, constant winds;

As was/is the case with these fires.

Check the wind conditions at the start and through the height of these fires. Look up the “El Diablo” winds that blow through the region.

And if you still think that a “mere” wildfire could never be hot enough to melt metal and glass, consider this;

Blacksmiths have used wood-fired (charcoal) forged to soften, and melt metals for hundreds of years. The key to a really hot wood fire is the amount of air available to fuel combustion. Blacksmiths use a bellows.

A wild or forest fire will be stoked by the wind. In fact, a wild or forest fire, if large or hot enough, will generate its own wind as the fire literally sucks the air from the surrounding areas into itself to feed.

All that is true; fires that large can generate their own wind, greatly increasing their temperature like when blacksmiths use a bellows, however the video didn't really show any melted metal that I could see.

originally posted by: Devino
What should be left after a fire? Stoves, refrigerators, water heaters, toilets (if they haven't exploded), aluminum gutters (if the fire didn't get hot enough to burn them) and all the metal fasteners/brackets and of course the concrete foundations.

Areal views don't show much but from the ground I see what looks like all of that stuff left behind. The narrator claims, almost hysterically, that nothing is left yet I see all kinds of stuff.

I agree, it looked like she was drawing conclusions from the pictures that the pictures didn't support. Melted metal? Where, I didn't see melted metal, and even if it happened as pointed out earlier blacksmiths melt metal using wind. In addition to generating its own wind, the comments to the youtube video page say there were 45mph winds blowing. I would say that's even more wind than the blacksmith's bellows!

a reply to: Arbitrageur

it looked like she was drawing conclusions from the pictures that the pictures didn't support. Melted metal? Where, I didn't see melted metal, and even if it happened as pointed out earlier blacksmiths melt metal using wind.

I don't see any evidence of melted metal either. What I do see is what appears to be forced air furnaces, water heaters and other barely recognizable appliances. Once I identified some of these shapes in one burnt out house I can see similar shapes in all of the houses as seen from the areal images.

Or click here for bigger version

Images courtesy of Reverbs

a reply to: Arbitrageur

If you can find them, take a look at some of the photos taken of the Signorello Estate winery by Eric Risberg of Associated Press(AP).

In at least one of the photos of the aftermath, you can see wine bottles laying on a metal rack that have been several deformed by the heat of the blaze.

Two things I noted from the photo:

The bottles are heavy glass and have the deep indentation in their bases characteristic of bottles used for sparkling wines, like Champagne, rather than the relatively “flat” base of a bottle used for “still” wines.

And, the bottles pictured were laying on their sides, indicating that these bottles were filled, not empty, which would have made them less likely to melt the way they did without enormous temperatures.

Bottles are stronger standing upright than on their sides, but filled bottles are usually stored on their sides to prevent the cork from drying.

www.scientificamerican.com...

Temperatures soared in the San Francisco Bay Area in early September, hitting 106 degrees Fahrenheit in San Francisco, a new record,

and 108 in San Rafael, north of the city. I

t was the warmest summer in more than 100 years of record keeping, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA: “It beat the previous record by a pretty wide margin.”


Those high temperatures dried out vegetation throughout the area, he said.

While fires are a part of life in California, this one became more destructive because it had so much dry brush and grassland — fed by last winter's rains — to burn.


Powerful winds pushed the flames farther, Swain said. Known locally as the Diablo wind, they're similar to the Santa Ana wind in Southern California, and they reached an unusually high speed of 79 mph Sunday night. Coupled with relatively low humidity, the wind patterns quickly created havoc.


“This is very much a weather-driven fire, but there is definitely a climate component to the overall story, too,” Swain said.


The dead brush and trees were the result not just of this year's hot temperatures, but also of the state's historic drought, which officially ended with the rainfall last winter, said LeRoy Westerling, a management professor at the University of California, Merced's School of Engineering.

All I have to say is holy sh## this chick is a moron.

I live in Napa I’ve seen the fires first hand. It was a fire... not a F-ing conspiracy.

Houses in California are completely wood, styrofoam, and stucco in Napa. Little to no metals.

Bathtubs here are made of plastic. Beds are made of wood. Will those survive?

Pine trees go poof? No pine trees have evolved to survive most wildfires. Some conifers need wildfires to reproduce.

I almost vomited watching this. I truly almost did.

Oh come on! This everything is a conspiracy madness is out of control!

Sometime in the way distant past, some peanuts (probably in Government) decided to import trees from Australia.

These trees grew and multiplied until some areas in California are now dense eucalyptus.

These are called bushfires in Australia and they burn very hot because they are fueled by eucalyptus oil.

Wrong trees to import as it turns out.

P

originally posted by: GBP/JPY
naw, there's no steel in the homes like a recliner frame or bed frames or shower plumbing or a friggin window frame

someone show me a hurricane strap anchor on a slab....ya see I'm your structures guy....commercial, seasoned structures rxpert

We don't use hurricane strap anchors in calif as we don't get hurricanes that far north.
many homes out here in calif now use pex, cpvc piping or copper piping and when copper piping get hot in fires the solder melts and the pipe fall apart.
Also most bathtubs now are fiberglass not iron so its does not help hiding in them during earthquakes.

a reply to: GBP/JPYImagine if you will a smoldering pile on a camp fire what happens when you fan it?

i built a trash incerator out of a 55 gallon drum some conduit pipe and an old air compressor the constant air being supplied by the compressor would help reduce everything in can to ash.

a reply to: GBP/JPYyes no hurricane straping because it is cali how often they get one . and would you want to build a slab on ground that gets lots of quakes? no steel support beams well i am guessing they do a lot of pinewood frames because of quakes. and relative low cost. my question is why does this happen almost yearly what fire prevention methods does state forestry use?

so much stupidity and ignorance in this thread.

I was a wildland firefighter, in my 20's, and have personally seen a wall of flame 200' tall moving through the brush.


What happened in Napa was just a bad combination of circumstances, 6 years of drought followed by a wet winter then extreme summer temps.

BTW, all houses built in cal since 1978? are on a solid concrete slab, earthquake code. You can tell about when a neighborhood was built by the type of foundation the houses are on.
North bay has been occupied a long time, with some houses being 100 or more years old, while their neighbors house might be only last year.
Another thing that has not been brought up, for decades cedar shingles were the go to roofing material for most of california, they were cheap and plentiful but they burn like matches, that is one of the biggest issues. They have been outlawed for decades on new roofs.
When we replaced the roof on our house, a 40 year old cedar shake roof, we went with a fire resistant composite shingle intended for the pacific n/w market. The roofing guy thought we were crazy, but our house was in a heavily wooded neighborhood and our property had 13 sweetgums, 5 chinese pistach and a half dozen redwoods ringing the house, if any neigbors house caught the whole hood would go up.
California is a fire climax environment and big fires happen and will always happen.
And all the political bs about cal gov doing this or that is nonsense, unlike most wildland fires, these fires spread through PRIVATE property, not govment lands. The state or fed gov have no control over private property, so if blame is going to be laid, it must lie collectivley with the community, both citizen and gov for not tackling the issue of fuel abatment.
And I can tell you from experience when fire fighter have to choose what property to save they will save those that have a chance, by making a definsible space, its a 100' clearance down here, before the fires start.

Easy on calling people stupid now. It's just them not knowing, and a moron Youtube video going for hits creating a false narrative aimed at people who don't know how big fires work.
I've got 20 years in and I am still learning. But I have seen a LOT! a reply to: punkinworks10

originally posted by: hounddoghowlie
a reply to: loam

it's a firestorm.

from the wiki, cause it's fast.

A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. It is most commonly a natural phenomenon, created during some of the largest bushfires and wildfires. Although the word has been used to describe certain large fires,[1] the phenomenon's determining characteristic is a fire with its own storm-force winds from every point of the compass.[2][3] The Black Saturday bushfires and the Great Peshtigo Fire are possible examples of forest fires with some portion of combustion due to a firestorm, as is the Great Hinckley Fire. Firestorms have also occurred in cities, usually as a deliberate effect of targeted explosives such as occurred as a result of the aerial firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Firestrom

ETA:

This wind shear is capable of producing small tornadoes or dust devils which can also dart around erratically, damage or destroy houses and buildings, and quickly spread the fire to areas outside the central area of the fire.

Here is a report on a tornado spawned from a firestorm in Canberra, Australia in 2003. The whole video is worth a watch and has incredible evidence but if you skip to 6:10 you can see footage of the tornado coming into canberra ahead of the fire front.

a reply to: harold223

Thanks for that video

There was another thread along the same lines as this one IE the fire damage 'looks' wrong
The overhead pics of the devastation in Canberra look very similar to the California pics which shows just how catastrophic a severe firestorm can be - no conspiracy required, it's simply nature at its worst.

December 10, 2017

Today, talk-show "icon" Ellen DeGeneres had to evacuate her home, due to one of the big wildfires getting too close.
Story: www.thewrap.com...

From the date of this thread's start, it looks like southern California is always burning, to some degree.

AT WHAT POINT are the fires an emergency that warrants a nationwide response...like major hurricanes trigger?

Lots of plastics and chemical laden stuff in the houses. It may be fire resistant, but if it exceeds the limit, it goes up like a torch. Also you have the natural gas adding to the fire and even cooking oils and stuff like that. Furniture stuffing is fire resistant, but it burns like a torch when the heat limit is reached, especially that stuff in beds. Chemicals like toilet bowl cleaners actually can adjuvant the fire too, they oxydize things. I mentioned toilet bowl cleaner, but that was just an example, I do not know if that oxydizes or not.

a reply to: loam

This fire is no coincidence. Why do you think the Getty center was evacuated. What was the centre allegedly used for earlier this year.

ATS is rubbish these days. It misses the best stories on the internet.