Tuesday we had an opportunity to burn another house. Getting houses is rare, let alone 2 in one month! This one was being torn down so they can build a new house. The owner was nice enough to let the fire dept do some training's in it and then for us to burn it down.
The house was pretty solid! He wanted a piece of log from it so they took one out with the loader.
We got all our equipment layed out. Hose lines charged. Had our briefing meeting. There was a large crowd gathered across the street to watch in the church parking lot. The owners friend had a drone and was flying it around the house and put the video on YouTube.
Chris and I were assigned to the back of the house in the grove of trees. The whole north and west side was SURROUNDED by trees and some of them were on the border of the fence and led right to the neighbors house. The owner wanted to keep the trees if we could and we had to make sure we didnt catch the neighbors house on fire that was under construction and had sheeting on the roof.
We sprayed down some of the trees but they were pretty wet and green.
and the lighting began!
When you spray water on a fire you push a lot of air. You can feed the fire or put it out depending on how you do it. We needed to keep the trees wet with out putting out the fire.
and keep the area surrounding the house cool with out pushing too much smoke through the neighborhood. We wanted the smoke to just go straight up.. but we got some good winds and rain! Why do we get rain when we light houses on fire!?
Chris
I got to take some great pictures since mostly we were just keeping an eye on things!
I love this goofball more than he will ever know!
These two I stole from others on our dept. We didnt get to see this part of the fire since we were in the corner.
Chris took this pict of me
The drone had an awesome video and I just screen shotted some pictures from it so theyre not as good of resolution but they're still pretty awesome! Now remember NO FLYING drones in a fire area.. however this guy had special permission.
You can see us in the back corner in the grove of trees with the hose line. The trees at the bottom of the picture are on the fence line and connect to the other house.
Todd and Chris
The walls of the house were a mix of lathen plaster and brick walls with wood over them. If you look close in the picture you can see the brick pieces on the one wall through the fire
It didnt collapse like a normal house does because of this. The west wall went all together and fell out instead of in. The north wall had to be pushed in so it didnt fall out.
Chris and I after the excitement was pretty much done
We singed a few branches which couldnt be helped but we did not lose a single tree!!
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