I Know We Moan

[emmie]

about our weather, but fancy having to battle this, what a truly terrible story.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23123817

[emmie]

i was watching the news, they are sending hundreds more of these guys into the inferno, i hope there is no more loss of life.

[emmie]

perhaps it was mentioned earlier, still following it, awful..

[Clanad]

Temperatures in the area were around 110 degress (F) and humidity was near zero (0)... unheard of.

Between 1910 and 1996, 389 forest firefighters were killed here in the U.S.... mostly in the western States.. The only other two fires coming close to this in numbers was the Mann Gulch fire in Montana in 1949 where 13 were killed and I think 1996 in Colorado that killed 14.

This one was truly horrific...

[emmie]

19 firefighters killed in one go, they are all from the same area,
the families must be devastated. I understand the extremes of temperature, but it seems they must have been totally caught out, they had practised using what looked like canvas tents to get under if the fire spread, which seemed totally inadequate, why couldn't they wear fire proof gear. I believe they are special teams who get to fires within a short time,

[Clanad]

Thry're called "Hot Shots"... a special and respected term for teams at walk in to fire areas (sometimes miles) and build fire lanes to keep fires from advanceing... all by hand with just pick axes and sometimes power saws they carry in.

The fire tent is a last resort survival technique... dig a hole like a shallow fox hole and cover with a fire proof blanket like affair. It will only last a few minutes due to the super heated air they need to breathe... if the fire is moving quickly they can survive, but if the temperatures inside the fire as it passes over reach several hundreds of degrees, all the oxygen is used up.

I used to fly one the lead attack planes used to build the slurry lines and sometimes we were directed to drop the slurry directly on the fire crews... to save them. Being that it's mainly water (the reddish stuff seen on videos is fertilizer mixed in with the water/bentonite mixture) such drops were highly coordinated to avoid injury to the fire fighters since the speed of the water being dropped was ogten over 120 mph from about 100 feet or so...

[paddywak]

Was watching it earlier and apparently they were part of a special unit used to spearhead in this sort of situation, but who ever they were and what ever the circumstances it's a terrible tragedy.

[emmie]

that's it, Hot Shots, what a terrible tragedy for all.

[emmie]

watching some of the footage, they didn't stand a chance.

[mikey4444]

I was in Death Valley in September 1992, and I hadn't been anywhere that hot before or since. My mate burned his hand opening the door of our rental car, when we returned to it after a walk in the hills. Much Germolene was in use for days afterwards !

Air conditioning has made the area inhabitable in ways that just wasn't possible 100 years ago. They don't call it Death Valley for nothing ::::
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_National_Park

[emmie]

this seems almost unprecedented,

[emmie]

DT, if you didn't notice this, then take a look, both posts related to needless deaths...