Comments on: Almost unimaginable grief

By: J.J. formerly Jimmy J.

J.J. formerly Jimmy J. — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 04:08:00 +0000

Twenty years ago we were living on Horsehead bay in Gig Harbor, WA. It was just getting dark when the house directly across the bay caught on fire. It was a small blaze at first, but by the time I had called 911 the entire house was engulfed. It was about three miles by road around the bay to where the house was. I jumped in the car and drove around to see if I could direct the firemen. They were just arriving as I drove up. By the time they began pumping water it was no longer a question of saving the house. It was a matter of trying to keep the fire from spreading to the forest and nearby houses. Could.Not.Believe.How.Fast It.Burned. Smoke detectors are a help, but a plan must be in place because time is of the essence. Fortunately, there was no one home, so there were no casualties.

My prayers go out to this family. As a bereaved parent I have personal knowledge of their grief. They will need all their strength and faith as well as the help and encouragement of others just to continue some semblance of their daily life for months, if not years. The death of a child is a crushing blow. Losing three and your parents so suddenly is so much worse. I pray that they find the path to solace and healing.

By: LisaM

LisaM — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:45:00 +0000

About 10 years ago, my aunt’s house burned to the ground so quickly that she and my uncle got out in only their night clothes. That week, I bought escape ladders for the upstairs bedrooms. We keep them under the beds, along with a backpack to carry the dog. My son is a Scout and we also go over fire escape plans every year. I like to think all of this will keep my family safe, but stories like this make me acknowledge that systems fail every day. I can’t imagine the parents’ grief.

By: Leah

Leah — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:05:14 +0000

Unfortunately – Victorians are prone to fire – it’s the way they are built, not the materials but the structure. It creates a central firestorm. Which is why when many Victorians catch fire – they burn to the ground quickly and are completely destroyed.

Terribly sad about this family.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:04:12 +0000

A note on fire detectors:

Code dictates where they go, and need to be in place for the final inspection. Assume there is a law in place there to have operational detectors at the time of sale (probably), they may not have been active during the renovation itself.

Smoke detectors come with a plastic dust cover that prevents the alarm from going off because of dust. During our renovation, we kept these dust covers on until all the spackling and sanding had been done, which for us was post-renovation since we were doing the painting. The fire department just wanted to make sure they were installed correctly and that we understood what those dust covers meant.

Not saying that this had anything to do with the fire here, but just to point out that the best systems in the world always have a human element in them that can keep them from being useful.

Having said that, when was the last time anyone checked their own smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors? If you haven’t done so in six months, do so now.

By: Simon Kenton

Simon Kenton — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:50:47 +0000

I’m a firefighter, Ed. Be easy on yourself. You did what you could. Without SCBA, and maybe with it, the smoke would have taken you too. Sprinklers can help if a fire gets going but you almost never see them in residential construction. If the smoke detectors don’t get you out early, it’s hard to survive. At peak energy release a fully involved single-family house can top out at 2 GW. I worked with my kids on evac plans. Nothing ever happened and they’re grown now, but I wish I’d worked with them even more.

By: Ed Bonderenka

Ed Bonderenka — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:03:56 +0000

Driving home from work one night, I saw a house fire.
Someone said there was still a kid inside. I knew the layout of the house (a ranch like mine). The blaze was in the living room.
I took a chair and busted the master bedroom window to go in. Black smoke billowed out like a solid mass.
I couldn’t bring myself to go in.
When the firemen arrived a few minutes later, they found the kid in that room, on the floor.
The window open had allowed air to rise off the floor, but he still died hours later, from smoke inhalation.
I don’t know what else I could have done.

By: rickl

rickl — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 02:23:23 +0000

Not to make light of this tragedy, but it reminded me of what a local talk radio host said a few years ago:

“Take a dead tree, drag it into your living room, stick it in a bucket of water, and wrap it with electrical wires. What could possibly go wrong?”

I used to love live Christmas trees when I was a kid (and had no responsibility for installing and maintaining them), but now I just have a small artificial tree.

By: Nolanimrod

Nolanimrod — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 02:12:09 +0000

A recent study by the National Fire Prevention Association

Tom Olshanski of the U.S. Fire Administration

Horrid things happen, and often happen to really nice people, and even nice people occasionally get frisky with the contractor (else a half-million mystery-romance novels lie). But we owe it to ourselves, and to these victims, to ask

If we had just one more Agency, one more Department, Authority, Administration, one more Dot-Org (say, Concerned Immolated Department-Store Santas), one more ACRONYM would this still have happened?

By: jms

jms — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:11:43 +0000

One year long ago I was at a friends house and we went to start a bonfire in their back yard. Poking around the edge of the woods, we found a pile of 10 or more old Christmas trees that had been discarded there over the course of the years. We thought they might make good kindling, so we piled them up as the base of the fire and lit them. The combination of the huge surface area of the needles and fine branches and the flammable pine oil in the wood created an enormous fireball; they all burned into ash in seconds, and the heat drove us running from the firepit. I’ll never forget that. What a horrible disaster from something that might at first glance seem completely innocuous.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:11:34 +0000

There’s a saying about “burns like a shingle factory”. Wood’s been dry for a century, at least. In the last thirty years, at least, even the humidity has been controlled.