Lessons from a wildfire

Weldor

WKR
Joined
Apr 20, 2022
Messages
2,003
Location
z
My brother inlaw’s house survived the fire that torched the McKenzie river canyon in Oregon. Several neighbors house’s burnt to the ground. He had a “green space” 75 yards deep surrounding his home and no wood decks. I think this and a little luck saved his home.
On another note, every gun safe, in a house the burned, failed.
Most safes are rated for minutes not a total burn down.
 

Elk97

WKR
Joined
Feb 14, 2019
Messages
805
Location
NW WA & SW MT
Yep. Out of state fire apparatus is exempt from any special emissions, I’ve never been checked for it. Now if you got a check engine light and it comes back to emissions, you’ll get placed out of service until the cal fire mechanics fix it.

I Wanted to write that additional info as there’s a lot of uproar on why apparatus is stopped from immediately going to incidents and I know some people on here didn’t know that maintenance is a big deal on fires. The contractors try to get every single dollar out of the federal and state government they can, not so much the counties and cities themselves. The contract game is big big money.

I hope these incidents in a slow news time in the country starts serving as a wake up call that public information officers have a lot more educating to do and there needs to be a crack down on fact checking with what any news source spews… for example, the media saying water was being carried with purses to douse flames as most people didn’t know engines carry collapsible pales. I’m glad Fox News out of anyone is bringing some highly educated fire folks on to talk.
Do all states require out of state emergency vehicles to go through the same type of inspection before deploying, or just CA? I've driven trucks all over the west and the only state that required any inspections of out of state highway trucks was CA. They'd write you up for even the smallest oil leak.
 

mt terry d

WKR
Shoot2HuntU
Joined
Jul 18, 2023
Messages
799
I was an over the road Owner Operator in the late 70's early 80's.
Made a couple runs to California and that was enough.
The LE and scales was ridiculous even then. Can't imagine
what it's like now.
 
Joined
Sep 15, 2024
Messages
15
I’ve done 30 plus western fire deployments over the years as part of what’s called the militia. Equipment is checked on every fire in every state not just CA when there is an incident management team running the fire. Sounds like they parceled out the equipment check to take something off the plate of the teams handling that mess. I’m just a dumb forester. I do have a slight understanding on how water pressure works. I’m the last house on a dead end road halfway up a hill on a public water system. We have to coordinate our water usage ie don’t take a shower while the washer is running. If the 70 plus other houses below me started running their garden hoses anll ant the same time and then the fire company opened all 5 hydrants guess how much water pressure I would have. And I live next door to the 100,000 gallon tank. Could probably pee with more pressure. Given those wind conditions my only surprise is wasn’t worse.
 
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