150 Miles of Fire in California......

[4ARedOctober Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close 4ARedOctober]

Sorry for your loss Steve.

[CarolF Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close CarolF]

So sorry to hear your sad news Steve. My thoughts are with you and all the others with family and friends affected by this terrible disaster.

[marcmuff Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close marcmuff]

My sister has a home in Smiley Park, near Running Springs. We are supposed stay there for her husband's 95th birthday party next month. They also have a home in Cerritos (Orange County) and are there now.

I just got this message from them awhile ago. "The homes on the road just over the hill behind us - Fredalba is the road that goes into our area and the name of the area just behind ours- were burning, and several of the places in our area burned - just east of where we are. Our place was OK as of 7PM. Now we have to see if the wind will cooperate and take it the other way."

Apparently, their next-door neighbor up there, who stayed despite the evacuation orders, said the top of the tree between his house and theirs kept catching fire and he keeps putting it out--so far so good.

Their place burned down many years ago and they had to rebuild.

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

Right after we were married we lived near Lake Arrowhead just off of Rim-of-the-World Highway. I had two big fears when we lived there - ones that literally fed nightmares. Forest fires was one of them - it was clear that if a fire got started in the area, it wouldn't make any difference how big a clear area we kept around the house. (The other nightmare was an accident on Rim-of-the-World highway itself. Which happened to some very close friends of ours a month after we left.)

*****

During the Oakland Hills fire about 20 years ago, one big factor that kept the fire going was wood shake and shingle roofs - quite popular in many areas in California. Long after the fire had left wooded and brushy areas where there was a supply of natural fuel, the fire sustained its spread by jumping roof-to-roof.

Roofs are a relatively flat surface where embers will settle. The wood shakes or shingles then ignite. More embers are created, which torch more houses.

If the roof of a building doesn't catch on fire, the house is much easier to save. It's harder for embers to ignite a building if only the walls are available to burn. And if the walls are non-combustible material, such as stucco there's even less fuel.

*****

All of the above applies more on the margins of a fire. In the main portion of a fire, the heat is so intense that many materials simply vaporize into combustible gas, and the gas ignites. As the main flame front moves past, then the remaining cellulose type materials continue burning.

That gas formation is a key reason why those brush fires in semi-arid locales are so intense. The native plants have a very high oil content - part of their adaptation to drought conditions. When a brush fire gets started the plant then burns in two stages as I described above. That's why people often comment about seeing trees and shrubs suddenly exploding into a fireball as the flame front arrives.

Steve,

Shake roofs were outlawed back in the 80's. Since then, the roofs are generally concrete tile. This was done because of the fire danger.

[T. R. Oglodyte Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close T. R. Oglodyte]

Steve,

Shake roofs were outlawed back in the 80's. Since then, the roofs are generally concrete tile. This was done because of the fire danger.

Tx for the info, John. That's good public policy. When I was in CA, I heard lots of talk about it, but I didn't remember that requirement actually being implemented except in a some locations (such as mountain towns) that were extreme fire hazard areas. I wasn't aware that it was being done in any large metropolitan areas.

When I left the Bay area in 1993 there were still a lot of wood shake and wood shingle roofs being installed, even after the Oakland Hills fire. In some areas they needed to be treated; for others it wasn't a requirement.