[NomadSK]

Originally Posted by The_Apex

Will any type of construction or water tank or hydrants be able to withstand this much inferno?

Or is it implemented to buy crucial time for escaping?

We deal with oil fires (major minor) quite regularly. It’s a common phenomenon in our industry. The consequences are less because it is mitigated before it even becomes a serious headache (90% cases). Pool oil fires burn at 1200-1400C, not talking about jet fires. Even we have windsocks installed, to check the upwinds, for the firefighters to approach the fire. It’s all science. The problem here I guess it’s homes which administration doesn’t care for, if it would be a facility of economic concerns, few heads would have started rolling by now.

Wood fires burn pretty cooler at I guess around 600C, at that temperature even the steel would handle such fires without having sprinkler system or fire hydrants. Bricks/mortar/cement are naturally fire retardant material and can withstand much much higher temperatures. Even structural steel is protected with a concrete cover as a passive fire protection.

The key is always to arrest the fire in initial stages. We have carried out enough studies for house fires, it takes around 19 seconds for the human to stop the fire after the startup in normal house scenario, after that it’s better to leave the location and save your life. No point in fighting once the inferno is out of control, it’s the job of firefighters after that. Mostly it’s the toxic smoke which kills before fire becomes a hazard.

Coming to your question - yes if the hazards are well known, it’s not rocket science to mitigate those hazards, engineers are supposed to do, with design, material usage, spacing subject to administration has the will and funding to do so. Even our human occupied buildings are positively pressurized to keep out the toxic gases in case of fire or gas related accidents. We have one time chemical face mask for every employee at his desk to use and evacuate to the dedicated assembly point as soon as possible.

[Tutenkhamen]

It feels so unreal. In todays age and that too in one of the most wealthiest state in one of the most advanced countries, this has happened and there's no stopping it.
The photos are weirdly cinematic and when it dawns on you that these are not created on Unity engine or some such thing, the horror dawns in.

Hope this ends soon and folks find a way to recover.

[Jeroen]

One of the primary problems here is the fact there are four major fires raging. It’s a matter of scale and to what scale are you prepared.

They had to call in fire fighters from other towns, and the army. They are also running out of water.

They partly rely a massive water tanks up in the hills to provide water and pressure on the water lines. Those tanks are emptying out now. In addition the weather conditions have been, till recently very unfavourable.

As mentioned early detection and action is key. Once a fire starts spreading it’s about being able to mobilise and deploy enough resources and keep doing that till the fires are out.

The fire department and its resources they used,were never dimensioned for this scale. Which is a budgetary and political decision.

Enquiries have already been announced. But at the end of the day the question that needs answering: what scale of disaster/fire do you want to be prepared for. There is always a chance you’re going to be hit with an even bigger disaster.

It’s similar to all the flood protection and the dikes in the Netherlands. We pour billions of euros into it, every year. Have been doing that for decades.

But all those flood protection measure and dikes are based on the assumption of certain meteorological conditions only happening every two hundred years or so. Doesn’t mean it could happen now and next week again! We would be woefully unprepared.

It’s the same with say fire department on an airport. They will be imension and equipped to handle one major crash, maybe even a crash involving multiple planes. But it’s finite. You have a crash that goes beyond they are dimensioned for and prepared it’s going to be a major disaster.

It’s a choice and with choice comes the need to understand of what might happen, ie the risks of your choice and accepting those

Jeroen

[NomadSK]

This is so heart wrenching to see, looks like straight from some hollywood flick, the only difference it’s real. Damn, the winds are so horrendous. Nature has it’s own ways to show who’s superior !!

https://youtu.be/bLeeVfJD4rQ?si=9xsnBVEU-XZjstSN

https://youtu.be/5jwH4W2gj1s?si=wUSpFU3JScAdAVCa

[autobahnjpr]

When you say richest, what is the measure - the state GPD or GPD per capital or some other measure?

Originally Posted by Samurai

California is the richest state in the world. In fact, if they were a country, they would be the 5th richest country, pushing India to 6th place, while having mere 2.5% of the population of India.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by autobahnjpr

When you say richest, what is the measure - the state GPD or GPD per capital or some other measure?

Obviously, state GDP. It is higher than India's national GDP.

[amol4184]

Cars/car parts melting and liquid metal running down the streets is something I have never seen before. This stuff is sending chills down my spine.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/38-truly-...l?guccounter=1









An aerial shot taken yesterday evening shows fires still raging:


I know there are many team bhp members in the area, hope you are all okay in these horrible, unprecedented, heartbreaking times.

[mobike008]

Back in December 2021, We did an entire drive of the Pacific Coast from Seattle and drove through the beautiful, gorgeous and rich towns of Santa Monica, Palisades, Malibu etc.

I remember while driving past, we were gaping at those jaw dropping gorgeous mansions and were thinking how the rich live.

It's really heart breaking to see a fire of this scale happen to one of the most beautiful part of California.

Wish & pray folks effected recover successfully and get most of their money back (if not all) from the Insurance companies to rebuild their lives.

[kinetic]

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

This was in today's TOI. Sadly it does look as if there's a lot of politics involved. Tough when bad politics lead to bad policymaking.

I live in California (San Francisco), and we're no strangers to fires in the northern part of the state. My honest opinion of this article is that its mostly blurring the facts and making the situation more political than it deserves to be, while complaining about politics, which is quite rich IMO.

1. Local CA environmentalists have long moved away from the stance of preserving or leaving forest lands untouched, and now promote controlled burns in fire prone areas. We had several park closures in the NorCal area recently so that the local authorities could conduct these burns. There can be a debate around whether this was implemented adequately, but this isn't a policy debate at this point

2. CA has had MUCH bigger fires in terms of acreage burned and structures lost in recent history. E.g. The Dixie Fire in rural NorCal burned nearly a million acres and 1,300 structures, or the Camp Fire that burned 150k acres and about 18,000 structures. We didn't see this level of politicization when these happened. What's different with this fire is the location (dense and urban-ish), the socio-economic level of those affected, and most importantly the timing of it i.e. post-election transitory period where the incoming administration and its various mouthpieces are playing politics in a "liberal state". What further proves this point is the complete silence from this group when a million acres were burned in Texas in 2024 under their party's administration. The fact is that both these fires were caused by hot and dry conditions combined with heavy wind patterns, and in the case of the Palisades fire these were historic wind events combined with a year of little to no rain. I'm sure there will be legitimate blame to go around in terms of policy implementation and even some changes, but articles like these are completely unserious, ignore history, and only serve as clickbait.

[NomadSK]

Originally Posted by amol4184

Cars/car parts melting and liquid metal running down the streets is something I have never seen before. This stuff is sending chills down my spine

Interesting picture, that’s how we get the idea of the temperature of fire during our investigations after the fires are doused, it’s aluminum being melted, which has a melt flow rate at around 580-600C (minimum), showing clearly the inferno temperature was around that degrees !! These are the sign and patterns we look into, helps us to get a general idea of the fire temperature and if that has changed the micro structure (recrystallization) and mechanical properties of steel. At that temperature steel has already lost its 60% of yield strength.

Another way to find the temperature of the fire is the way color of concrete changes from pink (@600C) to white (@900C) to powdery buff (@1100C) at different temperatures which gives us a generic clue.

[Mystic]

I think Southern California major cities are now taking preemptive extra precautions as in San Diego now which is near to LA. It is an arid reason near the coast and has a surprising weather unlike other coastal cities like my Visakhapatnam. Our house is locked in San Diego near the ocean and looked after by the Gardner on weekly visits as both my son and myself are out of country in Japan and India. It seems they are putting off the electricity and the fire engines are roaming around continuously monitoring the situation with heavy winds in San Diego now.

I wish and hope that such a catastrophe will never happen again and Americans are quick to learn and would definitely take precautions. I know how heart breaking it would be to see one’s home turn into ash in no time. It is all the more amplified as the median homes near the coast in Southern California costs on average of 2 million USD. Even if insurance repays the cost of building the home again , the valuation of the land in such burnt down neighbourhoods would drastically reduce.

[NomadSK]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

It’s a matter of scale and to what scale are you prepared.

True, that's why we design and put more emphasis on passive protections, rather than active fire fighting (which is also there). Because,

1) we know it can cause human loss, worst case if some outsider innocent life gets involved,
2) it can cause severe economic losses,
3) unwanted/unplanned shutdown of a critical facility, our strategic storage tanks cannot run low at any cost,
4) its a big big reputational loss,
5) the premium we would have to pay for the insurance is directly linked to the mitigations procedures we follow, both active and passive.

So when we know what are the consequences of the hazards, we can better plan for it.

Let me throw an example, which is similar to what's happening at LA, but for a smaller area to deal with, flaring is a normal procedure at any O&G facility, it is a necessary evil and usually done away from where refining critical processes are being done, because we are dealing with a continuous live open fire, not preferable to have it close by, hence a buffer zone is created. Generally around a 800m to 1Km away from the facility, so one can safely say it's a 1Km radius zone, depending on the number of flares in the region, one can have multiple flares and its an unmanned region, due to the hazards of flare radiation.

Now in this area only the process pipes pass through carrying the unwanted gasses which needs to be flared/burned. Its on similar lines to farting, except it's not put on fire. This flaring area is complete barren land, its unmanned and generally no maintenance works are supposed to happen there and is mostly neglected. Over a period of time we have unwanted grass popping up over the entire stretch, which gets dry and the open flame nearby from the flare creates a conducive environment for the fire to propagate and risk spreading. One can see the uncanny similarity of starting the bush fires at LA.

So what passive protection we undertook,

1) We tweaked our SOP's and procedures with SME's being involved,

2) we floated the contract to clear off the grass from that flaring zone annually. Initially, that worked well, but it was costing a lot of money and safety issue, we cannot let common people, unskilled labors, in hundreds to enter the facility on daily basis to cut the grass, it wasn't a viable solution in long run,

3) Benchmarked the concerns with the best practices being used in similar industries at other locations, there was a eureka moment, simple and yet cost effective brilliant idea by someone and now this is an industry wide accepted practice, a layer of gravel of certain thickness, filled the whole area with gravel (100mm), there is no grass growth since then, one time investment and a 5 year monitoring plan to assess the situation.

Reason for me to tell is, passive protection is more beneficial (for petrol heads - like seatbelts or even airbags), than the active protection. Fire fighting is active protection. Passive protection will help prevent a fire from spreading or resist the initial ignition or even let the fire come in close vicinity to the communities, because that's what you want to protect here.

I know its simple said being done, but the administration could create a buffer zone between the communities and the forest with either graveling the area or concreting or something which could passively mitigate the hazards, rather than actively participating in it, especially when one already knows its a common phenomenon in that region and is carrying a higher degree of risk and is an immediate danger to someone's life.

Lastly, please please guys have a fire extinguisher and smoke detectors installed in your homes, doesn't cost much and can be a difference between life and death. It's a one time small investment, I think all of us who can afford cars, can afford these small things too.

Oh yes, this is the picture of our last line of defense, in case of a toxic gas release at work. I have heard this is the same thing which pilots too carry in their cockpit, as their last safeguard.

[The_Apex]

These are really saddening pictures and videos.

In forest department on advent of summer, fire lines are drawn properly. Also incase of intense summer heat they deploy surveying units and even drones from recent years to monitor forest fires on daily basis with a plan to isolate it.

The unfavorable weather conditions there shut the chances of containing the fire.
It's true prevention is the best solution for tackling any sort of fire incident.