[AccessD] Perspective on So Cal fires 2007

John,
Thanks for your thoughtful and informative discussion. 
Best regards,
Tina

jwcolby wrote:
> 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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