651–660 of 691 posts
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That's an awful lot of CO2. You need it to stay there a long time, until the temperature gets below the ignition point, otherwise once the O2 comes back it will relight. You'll need it to get above the vegetation. You'll somehow need to prevent mixing of CO2 and O2 - remember, fires produce CO2 already. CO2 is heavier than air. It will not stay on a ridge but will flow downslope. CO2 is an invisible suffocation risk,…
CO2 is a major hazard, but of all the ideas listed and that I've read elsewhere, it does seem to have the most potential when the hazards are managed. That and tarps (instead of throwing them on the fire, perhaps laying them down to create strategic barriers to the spread of the fire). But it's undoubtedly a very hard engineering challenge. Some of the photos of the fire show the flames dwarfing the planes used to dr…
Have you worked out how much CO2 would be needed? How to prevent mixing with air? How it will be stored and deployed? How many people might die should there be a container breach?
The first two seem mind-boggling.
"Strategic barriers to the spread of the fire" are called firebreaks. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebreak points out:
> ... it is still sometimes possible for fire to spread across a seemingly impenetrable divide. For example, during the Cedar Fire of 2003, strong Santa Ana winds had blown enough burning embers across a 10-lane section of Interstate 15 to ignite the vegetation on the other side.[3] During the 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park, hot embers managed to cross the Lewis Canyon, a natural canyon up to a mile wide and 600 feet (180 m) deep.
Have you any thought for how large these tarps will need to be? 10 lanes is 120 feet.
Fire crews already make firebreaks by using machines to clear out vegetation. They'll need a machine to lay out this enormous tarp.
And where there isn't a road (which is its own firebreak), it will be hard to get any machine.
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Yes . https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fires-set-by-firefig... I'm honestly surprised at the downvotes. I thought this was common knowledge.
Your article cites 100 annual firefighter convictions for arson in North America. For your claim to be true, that means fewer than 200 arson convictions annually in all of Canada, US, and Mexico. It says firefighter arson is common, but does not appear to claim that they are the most common offender. That seems really really low!
Also, arson convictions are extremely rare. Most arsons are unsolved.
You can imagine how much more likely it is to be unsolved if the person investigating is also setting the fires
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Seems like properly-priced insurance should fix that, if you add a little bit of tort for the owners of the hazardous housing?
It's more like all of us have houses that release toxic fumes in fires. It's in the basic building material and furnishings. https://news.mongabay.com/2024/11/as-global-fire-risk-rises-...
It’s interesting to me how much attention these fires are getting because it affects relatively rich and tourist friendly areas. There are many, many wildfires every year across several states but most don’t even get their governor’s attention, let alone make national news. People seem shocked by what the fires can do but this is what many communities have had to deal with.
When was the last time a fire of this scale and destruction occurred but wasn't headline news?
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> IMO, a better prevention measure would be to not build houses out of sticks. That's already the case for much of the housing in Europe. Alas, here in the US the colonial and cabin aesthetics still win out, even when fire-resistant options aren't more expensive. It is not an aesthetic preference, the US used to construct housing like in Europe through the 19th century. That style of construction was repeatedly catas…
Your argument only applies to unreinforced masonry, which is no longer allowed by code in seismically-prone areas. For fire resistance you can use reinforced concrete, steel or aluminum framing, or wood framing with non-combustible walls. Or even go exotic with various prefab options and 3D printing. As for the higher cost, this has become mostly an urban myth. In regions with low construction costs such as the South…
Most typical reinforced masonry will fail during a severe earthquake, for which there is ample empirical evidence. The cost to reinforce masonry to e.g. a M8.5 standard is not small. The quantity of rebar, ties, etc required is expensive in both time and material. It isn’t cheap nor does the labor exist at the scale required.
I actually live in exotic construction, designed for extreme seismic and wind loads. Lots of steel, not much concrete, and extremely fire resistant (even though that isn’t a requirement here) but much cheaper to build and more seismic resistant (in theory) than reinforced concrete, which is what it replaces (its raison d’être). No structural wood either, but it wouldn’t be economical to construct a typical house this way.
This is an active area of research. If it was an “urban myth” there wouldn’t be so many engineering firms investing in developing new construction techniques that provide seismic resistance without the cost. If reinforced masonry actually worked in a reasonable way, we’d just use that.
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Your argument only applies to unreinforced masonry, which is no longer allowed by code in seismically-prone areas. For fire resistance you can use reinforced concrete, steel or aluminum framing, or wood framing with non-combustible walls. Or even go exotic with various prefab options and 3D printing. As for the higher cost, this has become mostly an urban myth. In regions with low construction costs such as the South…
My argument applies to reinforced masonry as well. You seem to be operating from a naive model of what is required to prevent combustion of buildings. We already use non-flammable walls in a lot of places; it is a speed bump for a serious fire without a lot of additional mitigations. Most typical reinforced masonry will fail during a severe earthquake, for which there is ample empirical evidence. The cost to reinforc…
As I explained in sibling threads, "speed bumps" are the most important thing here in CA. It's not about whether your structure can withstand a 1000-degree fire all around it. It's about whether your structure will set fire to three others within minutes of when it goes up in flames.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Tower_(San_Francisc...
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> Are you lucky enough to be in a place where insurers in California are still operating? California has had a state fire insurer (FAIR) of last resort for over fifty years and fire insurance is practically mandatory for mortgages so there aren’t many places that are excluded. It’s entirely funded by premiums and has never been bailed out by state or federal funds. It’s not like the National Insurance Flood Program t…
TIL! Thanks for the info. I didn't know there was an actually functioning state fire insurance plan. I guess all those news articles about insurers pulling out of California is political propaganda I fell for :/ Here's a link if anyone's interested https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/200-wrr/California...
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"Work for us or we'll keep you locked up for 3 years longer than if you did" isn't really volunteering - more like extortion.
Flip it around and it's not. The base case is the full time. Taking the option away doesn't help anyone.
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And those comments are as distasteful as yours.
I recommend doing some careful consideration about how intrinsically tied up politics are to every facet of our lives. You may find this distasteful, but choosing to ignore it merely blinds you to the way that power works in the United States.