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    Right. Got my Scotts confused.

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    Quote Originally posted by Fred Steeves View Post
    This storm chasing video shows entire neighborhoods obliterated in some clips. What I find interesting from a purely clinical point of view, is seeing nearby structures in those same clips totally intact, that would signify they were built after the new building codes were put in place.
    had the exact same thought Fred. Those codes drastically changed beginning with Homestead and could well explain the unexplainable. But then I remembered driving around the valleys of sonoma and napa and the hills that separate them last fall after the fire (ironically michael struck exactly one yr to the day those fires started).

    Out in the sparsely populated hills there would be small patches completely untouched right in the midst of total devastating. I couldn't figure how it could be until I let my imagination run as if I were in the midst of the wind swept fires. Then I could 'see' those winds and how they lift and fall and swirl this way and that and the whole thing moves across the topography in a dance influenced by a number of various factors..

    The picture below is of what was a house just outside of glen ellen, one of about 8 to 10 in a row. U can see what was a metal spiral stairs connecting basement, main, and 2nd floors. I called it stairway to hell. What was weird was all in that row burnt to the ground but one. Right next door to this one but totally unscathed. Probably built in the 70's with very dry, thirsty looking cedar siding, it looked like it was ready to go poof just standing there.

    What makes wild fires wild is wind. Winds do freaky things even at 155 mph. Fire, which produces heat has an influence but they don't need fire to do it and they're never sustained at a constant speed. Throw in topography, obstacles, atmospheric pressure, humidity, and so on and its a crap shoot as to whats gonna burn or blow into the next state. This sort of hard to explain phenomena happens in tornadoes too.

    Bottom line, the code improvements have made a significant dif and that may be what we're looking at. But then again..... ??


    [IMG][/IMG]

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    Senior Member Fred Steeves's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by palooka's revenge View Post
    But then I remembered driving around the valleys of sonoma and napa and the hills that separate them last fall after the fire (ironically michael struck exactly one yr to the day those fires started).
    Huh, I wasn't aware of the timing. That's interesting.

    Quote Originally posted by palooka's revenge View Post
    Out in the sparsely populated hills there would be small patches completely untouched right in the midst of total devastating. I couldn't figure how it could be until I let my imagination run as if I were in the midst of the wind swept fires. Then I could 'see' those winds and how they lift and fall and swirl this way and that and the whole thing moves across the topography in a dance influenced by a number of various factors..
    You bring up something that has bothered me about those fires. The picture you took is a prime example. I keep/kept seeing whole neighborhoods of houses burnt to the ground, yet the dry vegetation right there in the immediate vicinity seems to have always been left untouched, as is evident in your shot. Now why is that?

    When homes burn, even their heat resistant roofing tiles burn, and cars parked in the street sizzle away, why are there for instance still leaves on the adjacent trees and bushes? It's almost like the fire seeks just man made things.

    Quote Originally posted by palooka's revenge View Post
    Bottom line, the code improvements have made a significant dif and that may be what we're looking at. But then again..... ??
    It's unanswered questions like that which can lead some curious people to start going down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Like why did cars in the vicinity of the twin towers on 9/11 burn, while the strewn papers and such in the immediate vicinity were left unscathed? Evidence of some sort of Tesla type of weapon?

    Maybe, and that's what I happen to think, but maybe there's a logical explanation as well. I would love to sit down and ask these questions of a well seasoned fire expert/engineer, for both that and the brush fire houses. Just explain this shit to me in a simple way, draw me a picture if you have to, so I can shimmy on back down from the crazy tree.

    I'm that well seasoned person when it comes to constructing a house. I remember how they were built in Florida before Andrew, and I remember descriptions along the lines of survivors from that storm hearing the hurricane clips securing the roof rafters down to the exterior walls going "pop pop pop pop pop" as they were snapped off down the line with the roof being ripped away despite them. The answer to that was heavy duty strapping nailed to the extreme from one side of the wall stud or concrete below, up and over the rafter, and then back down the other side again. They also did away with stapling down the roof sheathing, made it have to be with big 10 penny nails instead, and also at a certain spacing.

    Storm surge? What we saw here with whole neighborhoods being literally scraped off of their foundations? You put your beach house up on telephone pole type stilts. You make damn sure they are buried nice and deep and, once again, you secure the living shit out of them to the home structure, continuing on up to the roof. You can even make that lower part a living area, but the exterior walls have to be framed in a feeble manner so that in event of a storm surge they snap right off and rip away to allow the water to flow through. They're called "blowout walls".

    So my bottom line I guess is that when you're familiar with the inner workings of something, it strips away a lot of the mystery and guess work. Knowing what I know, I would ride out a Michael type of storm in a beach house built to modern codes, but not one built before the changes. Might there be some additional factors , some weird phenomena with the swirling winds I'm unaware of, that could bring my trusted house to it's knees anyway? Like your vision with the wildfires? Sure, that's always possible. We never know it all.

    Going back to your fire picture, I would still love for someone to sit me down and explain the weird vegetation phenomena, the way I could sit someone down and explain why (almost for certain) some house in Michael's cross hairs survived, while most other surrounding houses were obliterated and/or swept away. Education, education, education...

    It's when these answers aren't forth coming, or they don't make sense to a reasonable person, that the problems arise.

    [IMG][/IMG]
    Last edited by Fred Steeves, 12th October 2018 at 10:55.
    The unexamined life is not worth living.

    Socrates

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    Just explain this shit to me in a simple way, draw me a picture if you have to, so I can shimmy on back down from the crazy tree.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    Hurricane Florence is now cat 2, and will still be devastating. I'm on the west coast now, due to fly home tomorrow.

    She's so big, the space station had to use a wide angle lens.

    The shots appeared to have been taken with fish-eye lens.

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    Quote Originally posted by Fred Steeves View Post
    Huh, I wasn't aware of the timing. That's interesting.
    yeah, freekie eh. this is according to DX (starry night) who was living out there in a small house situated in a wine orchard on the outskirts of sonoma at the time. in the end the house survived by less than half mile by my estimate. i went out to help her clean up. she'd left a couple windows open in the rush to evac which contaminated everything inside. this was enuf of cal for her. she now lives back here with me.

    You bring up something that has bothered me about those fires. The picture you took is a prime example. I keep/kept seeing whole neighborhoods of houses burnt to the ground, yet the dry vegetation right there in the immediate vicinity seems to have always been left untouched, as is evident in your shot. Now why is that?
    i think i can explain part of it but not all of it. the fire is in the air and moving at incredible speeds. the burn is from the top down. still, we see phenomena that appears to defy reason.

    It's almost like the fire seeks just man made things.
    frankly, i think U are on to something. this very thought crossed my mind in several instances. but then, there will be untouched man made stuff smack dab in the middle of devastation.

    Here's the untouched house i mentioned...

    the living tree line looks like it went thru a massive singe. like a brown out. the fire is moving so fast the living burns out before it can get going good enuf to burn down. the stairway to hell house was on the other side of it. look at the ground behind it and the burnt house to its left. Green! Even some green in the tree line behind them. Having said that it was about a month after the fires that I toured. Time for it to start coming back. But what about those fence posts? Those are wood and look totally unscathed!

    the deck in the foreground? composite. singed in places.

    Cars? Yup. this was 3-4 houses down from the stairway...

    directly behind the car is the remains of a house. those trees that stood in close proximity, though devoid of most branches and greenery represent life defying the grim reaper. they must have endured exposure to incredible heat and flame.


    Might there be some additional factors , some weird phenomena with the swirling winds I'm unaware of, that could bring my trusted house to it's knees anyway?
    Oh, U betcha. As far as I'm concerned anyway. Up in those hills i fully expected to see trees burnt to the ground or at least severely burned but that wasn't the case. It appeared more as a massive singe just like that tree line shows. out in the hills is was like a massive brown out with tiny areas showing absolutely no sign there had been a fire. If U took away what U saw surrounding these tiny areas U'd never know there had been a fire. just like that lone house. The only thing in my mind that could justify that was the idea that the fire was moving so fast in an environment of unusually low humidity pushed by unusually high winds clocking well over 50 mph. This all moving in forests alive with flora from ground to canopy top spread out in a topography where micro features played a significant role in a macro result. and the heart of the fire is up in the air, not down on the ground.


    Evidence of some sort of Tesla type of weapon?
    I hear ya Fred. Its mind boggling and fodder for conspiracy theory to any mind searching for understandings in the way of explanation in a time where we have enuf evidence to be aware we are under attack. Indeed, life itself is under attack. And we have some idea of the advanced technologies available to anti-life forces such as what Tesla dubbed the death ray. We seem to possess an unrequited desire to understand the mysteries upon which the wings of this universe fly. I know i do as witnessed by this piece...

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    They used a wide angle lens to take the photos, Kathy. Similar to but not the same as fish eye, I think.

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    aircrete and domes would be a more sensible building solution for any natural (or unnatural) disaster. IMO these situations could be just what nature does? " I'd like to think that way. Whatever the cause, I cannot accept that there is nothing good to come out of the horror.

    Natural disasters, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, floods, volcanic eruptions - you name it, a dome is the strongest structural shape bar none. The fragile shell of an egg would crumble under the slightest pressure if it was flat. It’s incredible strength comes from it’s dome shape. A dome is strong because it distributes forces equally in all direction throughout it’s entire surface. Architects and engineers have know this for centuries. Some of the oldest standing buildings in the world are domes. That's why they cover some of the worlds most prominent buildings, like the US capital, state capitals, cathedrals, temples and mosques.

    “Sick house syndrome” is a term used to describe the ailments caused by the off gassing of modern construction materials. AirCrete is inert, it’s composed of limestone and other natural materials. And it’s a good base for the application of interior natural plasters. https://www.domegaia.com/aircrete.html
    .

    Made professionally

    What is aircrete?
    Aircrete is a lightweight masonry material, combining the strength, durability and thermal efficiency of concrete with the ease of use that comes with a lightweight material; it is easy to handle, cut and work with on site.

    What is aircrete made from?
    The materials used in the manufacture of Aircrete in the UK are sand, pulverised fuel ash (PFA), cement, lime and water.

    About 70 per cent of the volume of each Celcon Block manufactured in the UK by industry leader H+H is PFA. This is a waste material that is a by-product of coal-fired energy generation and aircrete blocks are therefore hugely sustainable, making use of a material that would otherwise be sent to landfill. The use of PFA gives the blocks their distinctive grey colour.

    Celcon Blocks also contain a percentage of sand and this percentage can vary depending on the availability of PFA. Some European plants manufacture aircrete using sand entirely in place of PFA. The resulting block will have the same performance characteristics but will be a pale milky colour.

    What makes aircrete so light?
    The main difference between an aircrete block and a dense concrete block is in its weight, and this is determined by the way it is made. The basic ingredients of aircrete (sand, PFA, cement, lime and water) are mixed into a slurry and a small amount of aluminium oxide is added to the mix. This causes a chemical reaction in which air bubbles are formed – it’s a very similar process to adding yeast to a flour mix to make bread.

    Once all the bubbles have been formed, the aircrete mix sets into a soft block which is then cut to size. These cut blocks are transferred into autoclaves for high pressure curing to produce rigid blocks with the strength to carry the weight of an entire building.

    What are the benefits of aircrete?
    The air pockets, or cells, trapped within the concrete give aircrete blocks their distinctive performance benefits.

    As the cells are not interconnecting, aircrete offers excellent sound insulation, superb thermal insulation and air-tightness. They are also entirely waterproof and resistant to sulfate – important when using aircrete below ground level.

    For builders using aircrete on site, the main advantages are to do with ease of use. Because they are lightweight, aircrete blocks can easily be moved around and are much easier to lay. They can also be cut with a hand saw, allowing for standard block sizes to be cut down to fit the precise dimensions of details such as door and window openings.

    Aircrete is also fire resistant, making it an ideal product for use in residential properties. Available in a range of thicknesses - 75-200 millimetres (mm) - and strengths (2.9N mm2 up to 8.7N mm2), the blocks can be used from below DPC level right up to the eaves of a house and include both internal and external cavity walls; solid walls; party walls; and beam and block floors.

    Aircrete’s load-bearing capabilities are often underestimated, meaning the product can be overlooked for foundations, but it does in fact support up to a three-storey residential building with easehttps://www.planningportal.co.uk/inf..._-_structure/5.
    OR DIY

    https://www.doityourself.com/stry/ho...oncrete-blocks


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEHyTvLphnQ



    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR8KiyLUWI0



    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVNrjGh1A94



    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lcIeT7Li2E
    Last edited by Maggie, 15th October 2018 at 23:01.

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    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Fred Steeves View Post
    Huh, I wasn't aware of the timing. That's interesting.



    You bring up something that has bothered me about those fires. The picture you took is a prime example. I keep/kept seeing whole neighborhoods of houses burnt to the ground, yet the dry vegetation right there in the immediate vicinity seems to have always been left untouched, as is evident in your shot. Now why is that?

    When homes burn, even their heat resistant roofing tiles burn, and cars parked in the street sizzle away, why are there for instance still leaves on the adjacent trees and bushes? It's almost like the fire seeks just man made things.



    It's unanswered questions like that which can lead some curious people to start going down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Like why did cars in the vicinity of the twin towers on 9/11 burn, while the strewn papers and such in the immediate vicinity were left unscathed? Evidence of some sort of Tesla type of weapon?

    Maybe, and that's what I happen to think, but maybe there's a logical explanation as well. I would love to sit down and ask these questions of a well seasoned fire expert/engineer, for both that and the brush fire houses. Just explain this shit to me in a simple way, draw me a picture if you have to, so I can shimmy on back down from the crazy tree.

    I'm that well seasoned person when it comes to constructing a house. I remember how they were built in Florida before Andrew, and I remember descriptions along the lines of survivors from that storm hearing the hurricane clips securing the roof rafters down to the exterior walls going "pop pop pop pop pop" as they were snapped off down the line with the roof being ripped away despite them. The answer to that was heavy duty strapping nailed to the extreme from one side of the wall stud or concrete below, up and over the rafter, and then back down the other side again. They also did away with stapling down the roof sheathing, made it have to be with big 10 penny nails instead, and also at a certain spacing.

    Storm surge? What we saw here with whole neighborhoods being literally scraped off of their foundations? You put your beach house up on telephone pole type stilts. You make damn sure they are buried nice and deep and, once again, you secure the living shit out of them to the home structure, continuing on up to the roof. You can even make that lower part a living area, but the exterior walls have to be framed in a feeble manner so that in event of a storm surge they snap right off and rip away to allow the water to flow through. They're called "blowout walls".

    So my bottom line I guess is that when you're familiar with the inner workings of something, it strips away a lot of the mystery and guess work. Knowing what I know, I would ride out a Michael type of storm in a beach house built to modern codes, but not one built before the changes. Might there be some additional factors , some weird phenomena with the swirling winds I'm unaware of, that could bring my trusted house to it's knees anyway? Like your vision with the wildfires? Sure, that's always possible. We never know it all.

    Going back to your fire picture, I would still love for someone to sit me down and explain the weird vegetation phenomena, the way I could sit someone down and explain why (almost for certain) some house in Michael's cross hairs survived, while most other surrounding houses were obliterated and/or swept away. Education, education, education...

    It's when these answers aren't forth coming, or they don't make sense to a reasonable person, that the problems arise.

    [IMG][/IMG]
    Natural anomalies...they happen in nearly every natural disaster...if they don't look like this then there is something to worry about...
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    The bases of the trees in front were burned and they fell. On the left are also charred trunks. Behind the house there is not a lot of visible charring. There was likely a lot of wind blowing the heat and flames such that those trees didn't burn. Fires can jump.

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    And now for a "loaded" question:

    Is there a problem with this sort of attitude after a disaster, such as the case here post Hurricane Michael?

    Name:  Looters.jpg
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    The unexamined life is not worth living.

    Socrates

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    Quote Originally posted by Fred Steeves View Post
    And now for a "loaded" question:

    Is there a problem with this sort of attitude after a disaster, such as the case here post Hurricane Michael?

    Name:  Looters.jpg
Views: 90
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    Well, a loaded question deserves a loaded answer, so here it comes.

    First of all, there's a difference between looting and scavenging, and both are morally very wide areas of grey. Scavenging could vary from the rather innocent concept once known among hunter-gatherers all the way to bordering on disrespect — e.g. harvesting someone else's former possessions from the moment said person has died. Or perhaps shorter put, the huge contrast between innocence and sheer opportunism.

    Looting on the other hand — at least, as I understand it — is always a form of stealing from someone who's still alive, but even then still it remains a huge grey area in its own right. Some people steal because they are trying to survive. Others steal out of sheer opportunism, and in the latter case, they will often even steal items which are completely useless and irrelevant with regard to survival, such as TV sets, stereo equipment and other luxury items — they do not steal out of a pressing need, but simply because they can.

    In other words, first of all there is a difference between scavenging and looting, and secondly, either of those two concepts has its own very wide spectrum of morality attached to it.

    And as if that were not complicated enough yet, there is the subject of the extent to which any given person would be capable of assessing not only the nature of what's going on — is someone merely picking up items that they don't think belong to anyone, or are they taking away items of which they know that they do belong to someone? — but also whether the scavenger or the looter would rather be acting out of innocence or whether they would be acting disrespectfully and/or opportunistically.

    But wait, let's make it even more complicated. What is the state of mind of the person witnessing the scavenging or the looting? Are they clearheaded and mentally stable? Are they emotional? Are they aggressive and/or antisocial assholes? Are they people who believe in gratuitous violence? Are they people who condone the death penalty and therefore believe that a human being is entitled to ending the life of another human being over a real or perceived crime?

    We are after all talking of a country where gun possession is legal, and where people are being sentenced to death and executed by the government under far less straining conditions than after a storm. So the potential for lethal violence is already there, more so than in countries where gun possession is heavily restricted.

    Without getting into each and every potential situation and looking at each and every variable, the bottom line is that for myself as an individual, yes, there most definitely is a problem with — quoting your words — "that sort of attitude", and not just one either.
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    One of the reasons people want to get back home quickly is thieves. The sign doesn't surprise me.


    The following is only tangentially related:

    I recently watched a segment of a show about remodeling the inside of a house. After it was furnished the last job to be done was to install a wireless, battery operated security system. The reason was that people who have observed all the work and then the filling of the house with new stuff just might be tempted to break in and steal a bunch of it.

    Most people aren't thieves but it only takes a couple to ruin your day.

    Looters come out after disasters.

    And after them are the price gougers who charge you five times the price for things like generators and other important items, because you need them.

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