[AccessD] Perspective on So Cal fires 2007

Greg,

I was a (volunteer) firefighter up in Connecticut and completed the
Firefighter 1 training (required to go inside burning buildings).  I also
lived in San Marcos for 15 years (1980-1995) before moving on.  While you
are correct in everything you say it still doesn't paint the full picture.  

The shake shingle roofs which were quite common on the houses built in the
70s and 80s will catch fire from embers landing on the roofs.  If these
shingles are old and untreated they will catch fairly rapidly and once a
patch of roof is engulfed no garden hose will put it out.  A fully engulfed
home can and will catch the house next door and in fact entire neighborhoods
can go very quickly.  People caught in those situations can quite easily
die.  Fires blown by high winds can "jump" hundreds of yards or even miles
(in brush).  In fact this is exactly how they jump the freeways which you
would think would act as natural firebreaks and create natural boundaries;
They can but all too often do not because of the winds.  Thus a single house
on fire can "cause" another house hundreds of yards away to burn.

Watch the TV.  A full fire crew CANNOT EXTINGUISH a fully engulfed home fire
with entire engines available to them, all they can do is control and wet
down the adjacent buildings to prevent the spread.

Trained firemen die every year (encased in full on fire gear) because they
get caught in the middle of a fire when the fire jumps over them and catches
the brush around them.  In fact firemen fighting brush fires are often
provided "solar blankets" which can SOMETIMES save their lives by allowing
them to hide under these blankets if they do get caught in a fire.

I have never been inside of a real live burning structure but I have done
the training with air packs and fire suits, going into training buildings
with real fires (and LOTS of smoke) and even with suits designed to
withstand 600 degree heat it is HOT and you can't see 2 inches in front of
your face.  Unprotected civilians in a fully engulfed burning neighborhood
will die, if not from the flames and heat, then from smoke inhalation or
even heart attacks.  

Evacuating a million people is the exact right thing to do rather than lose
lives.  Even worse is to lose firefighters trying to rescue the idiots that
want to try and save their homes and get caught behind the fire line.  A
single house burning is nothing to mess with, a brush fire or an entire
burning neighborhood whipped up by high winds can turn deadly in seconds,
even for trained professionals.

It is easy to criticize the effects of evacuations but in fact people die
from these fires every year because they refuse to leave and try to save
their home with garden hoses.  Personally I don't mind if idiots die
(cleansing the gene pool) but I object to firefighters dying trying to
rescue the idiots.

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Greg Worthey
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 4:14 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] Perspective on So Cal fires 2007

I live in san diego.

Facts on the So Cal fires:
- has affected about 640 square miles (410,000 acres) so far. 
- 1,000,000 people have been forcibly evacuated (last number I heard for San
Diego county was 513,000, yesterday)
- most of those people were ordered to leave by an automated recording,
several miles in advance of any possible fire path. This "perfect storm", in
fact, came nowhere near 99% of their homes.
- 1,250 homes have been destroyed; half that from the 2003 fires
- information about the size and location of the fires remains wildly fuzzy
at best. Best mapped info is here:
http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/kml/conus.kmz (note: you need google earth)
- while a million people are forced to sit in parking lots and auditoriums
(as if panic were called for), only about 1000 people in all of so cal are
fighting fires (as if no one could help)
- Planes were scooping water from the pacific ocean to drop on Malibu, tout
suite, by early Monday morning. As of Wednesday morning, officials are still
TALKING about doing the same here. It has nothing to do with wind
conditions; same lie they used 4 years ago.


While it's depicted on the news as a wild inferno racing to wipe out the
western seaboard, the reality is that it's mostly low brush fires in scantly
covered (semi-desert) unpopulated areas. It's a tragedy for wildlife, but
mostly it's just insane overreaction (and underreaction) re people. The news
picks the most impressive clips (i.e. a house or patch of trees in inferno),
rather than the prevalent lowscale desert brush fire, and loops that image
over and over. Most of the 1,000,000 people evacuated were in no danger at
all. 

Most of the 1200 houses were randomly hit (i.e. one destroyed, while
neighbors were untouched). This indicates that in many cases a person with a
garden hose could have put out the incipient fires on the spot, before they
consumed anything and grew. Not in all cases, of course, but when an ember
hits, it's going to start a SMALL fire, and a quick garden hose can put it
out (whereas a firetruck hours later can only try to calm the all-consuming
inferno).

So not only did this new "reverse 911 system" massively inconvenience and
frighten a MILLION people, and nearly shut down the whole county, it also
removed all witnesses to small brush fires becoming infernos due to the fact
that no one was there to do the least thing to prevent spreading to big fuel
(ie. trees and houses).

Insanity. Kind of like dutifully confiscating toothpaste and nail clippers,
while allowing 75% of bombs through airport security.

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