California fires
 

I was talking with the Mrs this morn over the paper. It looks to me like they will likely find a significant number of the 300 still missing near Paradise deceased.

Is there a way to build a fireproof house?

I know they used to spray water on the roof.
Apparently that works on lesser fires?

Double post?

Yes.

I think the contained temperatures present in a wildfire front are very high. I really suspect that if you do not get out of their way. Or cannot get well underground there are going to be serious issues.

If they indeed can travel at speeds quoted especially. A type of flash fire has developed that will boil small volumes of water off at an almost flash rate.

I have not watched any forest fires close up and these are generally slower. But just to watch a large evergreen tree go up as one did in our neighborhood. Is quite a thing to observe.

It was almost explosive once it really got going. The time constant from start to finish was a lot quicker than I would have expected. The actual trunk burning will probably persist after. Yet if you look at an area that has had a forest fire and the trees are dead. The trunks are usually still standing but damaged. They do not regrow either I think.

A wildfire possibly is more like a blowtorch. So hot it almost instantly ignites anything in it's path at times. I was also thinking it might even create it's own wind. Like adding more oxygen that normally available.

O.K. Everyone back into your fallout shelters. There was a lot of devastation in California but the odds of it happening to any one of us are almost unmeasurably small.

An individual house fire is a true disaster to those directly affected. I have attended many in the past as a Fire & Rescue medic and now as a Red Cross disaster volunteer. The closest thing to a community-wide disaster I have seen is flooding. Your shelter would kill you in that case.

I saw some melted engine blocks on some of those pictures. I don’t see a conventional structure taking that kind of heat. Wet or not.

Underground may be the only method like I stated in the other thread. Even then, the air would be super heated and thin on O2. An air supply would be needed.