But really, any #MarshallFire twitter post right now.
If what I heard was correct and they're having 110 mph wind gusts, any fire is likely to spread, even in a neighborhood. I agree the open space makes it spread even faster, but with that kind of wind, fire reaches a new level of destruction.
We just moved from the Bay Area last year. This isn’t an area in the wilderness, it’s suburbia. This would be like if 600 homes on the edge of Fremont or San Jose burned.
Freak situation where we haven’t had rain in 3 months, winds were super high, temps were high for Dec, and it sounds like power lines went down. Unreal.
My area has just been removed from the pre-evacuation zone, since the winds have finally subsided.
For anyone that doesn't live here, this was caused by Chinook winds that were stronger than usual combined with extremely dry air and vegetation. My specific location had 115 mph gusts today. When you live here you get used to the Chinooks but today was extreme. Entire house was shaking.
To add color to the comment above, it is indeed an extremely suburban area. The fire started on Marshall Mesa, which is a popular mountain biking trail. Notably if you go east from Marshall Mesa you suddenly hit a shopping center with a Costco and a Target. The fire went east and directly into the shopping center along with all of the homes clustered in the neighborhoods around it. Terrible, and with very little warning.
I hope your house is okay. I'm very glad your family is safe.
This is the second time in as many years I’ve been surprised to see fires close enough to be viewed from the front yard - in exact opposite directions.
I’m at the N Boulder rec center with my partner (a reporter) covering this for the NYT. Thankfully it seems quiet and the wind is dying down.
Pray for snow!
It should be noted that the contaminated areas of Rocky flats are extremely secure and buried under massively overbuilt layers of concrete containments. The EPA milked the site for super fund money for probably a decade longer than it needed to for the cleanup. If you're wondering how I know this it's because I have several neighbors who used to work at the plant and then worked on the EPA-led cleanup when it was a super fund site.
Though much radioactive material was removed (including 21 tons of weapons-grade material), concerns over residual radioactive contamination being made airborne through fire or other disturbance remain.
If anyone from this area wants to talk, I'm game. Email's in my profile.
https://www.commfound.org/grants/get-grant/Boulder-County-Wi...
If your house is close to 93 and 72 you probably have a ton of debris in your yard.
The Chinook winds were the worst I've seen. When I heard there were fires I knew it was going to be bad. But I couldn't imagine that it was going to burn down entire shopping centers.
80mph+ wind gusts are crazy, and it's impossible to contain the fire until the wind dies down.
FIRMS Fire Map allows you to interactively browse the full archive of global active fire detections from MODIS and VIIRS. Near real-time fire data are available within approximately 3 hours of satellite overpass and imagery within 4-5 hours.
DO NOT USE FOR EMERGENCY PLANNING OR RESPONSE. Data are not realtime, and local authorities should be given precedence.
A slightly more useful view below:
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs...
If you’re reading this, I’d encourage you to look around and think about what you’d take and where you’d go if you had to leave right now.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/
I think you might be getting downvoted for "fireproof" which sounds absolute, and is probably not realistic. But you're right that regulations should evolve to require responsible home design and maintenance in fire-prone areas!
If you want to understand wildfires, read everything he's written. He's basically the single handed Mythbusters of wildfire understanding, and has done things like "instrumented crown fires of test stands" to better understand radiant heat flux from actual fires.
The material you're more likely to use for a home if it's not wood is concrete or brick with some steel added. Concrete and brick are very fire resistant, which would make it much harder for a building to catch, and so harder for fire to spread if the building doesn't catch. The reason our homes in the US aren't brick (anymore) is it's a very expensive/specialized job, but wood framing is easy in comparison and wood is cheap here (and we have a lot of lumber mills to churn out small standardized pieces)
The inside would of course burn eventually if engulfed in a slow-moving fire with plenty of fuel, because things ignite when they get hot enough (or turn to charcoal if there's not enough oxygen). But if you're lucky the fire will move past quickly or run out of fuel, so every little advantage helps.
Any sort of structure, wood or not, will withstand a huge radiant flux of energy before catching fire. Well, well beyond what will crispy fry a human, the siding may be charred, but it won't burn. Even wood siding tolerates a lot.
What lights houses on fire are firebrands - "burning crap from the sky." Trees, mostly, embers, other houses... that's what catches things. Typically it will light some small stuff near the house first, or in the corners of the roof (pine needles are a common enough fuel source). At that point, you've got a far harder problem - direct flame impingement. If you get to that point, you are usually screwed.
You can build fireproof roofs - I fully support pretty much anything in any areas requiring a Class A fireproof roof, which doesn't really mean much more than "being careful what you build, and not using wood shake." An asphalt shingle roof can often be Class A fireproof, and that tolerates a 2' x 2' bit of burning brand on the roof without burnthrough. The roof may not be in great shape, but an awful lot of "stuff on fire" can land on it, and if it's a properly constructed Class A roof, it won't penetrate to the building.
The landscaping around the building is a harder problem. Within 30' or so, it generally has to "not burn." This can be from design, or from sprinklers, or... whatever. If the landscaping within 30' of a house is on fire, the house is likely to follow. If you keep that from lighting, the house stands a pretty good chance.
... yes, this means that in suburbia, if the house next door is on fire, you're screwed. Don't live in such tightly packed spaces.
The next major problem are windows. If they fail, the house usually goes. They tolerate a lot, but in high wind storms, random debris can break the window, and then firebrands get in. Whoops. I would like to see some good studies on shutters, because they seem like the sort of thing that will make a very real difference on window breakage in storms, but they're not a thing anymore and probably won't come back.
But look at the debris patterns when you find the news articles of the burned out neighborhoods. Almost always, you'll see intact lawns and vegetation around a burned out foundation. It's not a "wall of flame" marching through the neighborhood - it's the firebrands, blown by the wind, that you have to defend against.
Unfortunately, when it comes to wildfires, when you've got things like 80 gusting 100, you're also just screwed. :/
See this IBHS wildfire structure ember test video:
This isn't in the foothills, where fires are expected. This is where no one expected a fire like this.
This is, incidentally, a key issue in risk management: risk profiles and threat models are not a constant. The model is a reflection of reality, and if reality changes, the model should change with it.
Although this is tragic, tech to help manage fires is coming along and states can raise their standards to encourage private companies to manage risk.
This has happened in Victoria, Australia: https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-an-australian-state-faced-deva...
About three years ago I had to do a bunch of research on fire resistant construction for a project. I came across something that is fantastic. Part of me doesn't understand why this isn't a requirement in fire-prone areas, if not every home and building.
This is the product we used, of course, there are other manufacturers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVWVP3tKlZc
No affiliation at all other than being a customer. Yes, we conducted our own tests before making the decision.
It won't resist flames forever, but it absolutely delays the maximal burn event. In addition to this, it provides a potentially significant delay of the spread from structure to structure, particularly if the gap between structures is reasonable (say, 10 ft or more).
In speaking to LA County permit authorities I learned that one of the problems using advanced technology is that the bureaucracy of the system gets in the way. It's truly sad. The way the engineers put it to me translates to: If we don't have a checkbox, you can't use it. Seriously.
The only way to use it is for YOU to foot the bill and pay to conduct all the tests required to add the product to the approved materials list. This process, again, due to the bureaucracy, could take years. And, BTW, much as is the case with a lot of things in the US, obtaining approval in one county does not automatically allow someone to use it outside that county. Sometimes I think the US is a bunch of independent little kingdoms, much more so than a country.
In our case we could not obtain approval because the material was not on the list. We provided tons of proof, even getting the CEO's of various intumescent coating companies involved. The approvals are very weird, for example, a product might be approved for outdoor use and not approved for indoor applications. No, not because it won't work or is toxic. More often than not it is because the tests were not conducted for that particular application and you are out of luck. You might be approved to paint your walls with this stuff but are not allowed to coat your framing, rafters, etc. with it. Crazy.
We ended-up working around these barriers because this was a DoD project. They simply pulled rank and that was that.
https://bouldercounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/inde...
Ok they could all be related I guess.
It's the end of December and apparently there's no snow (!!?) at 5000ft in Colorado? Insane.
The joke in Denver is sometimes that the city's snow plowing plan for the sidestreets appears to be "wait for it to melt" ....which works most of the time. Even in January the average day is over 45F, which combined with the sunny climate often makes short work of snow.
