On Sun, 13 Apr 2014 21:12:35 -0400, "Mike Marlow"
wrote:

wrote:


They're not going to save a house that's fully engulfed. A fire chief
of a midsize city once told me that if they have to use more than
50gal of water on a house fire, it's a likely total loss. It's not
the fire that does the damage, rather the smoke and in particular, the
water. He guaranteed that if he emptied his pumper on a house it
would be totaled.

He might indeed have said that but if he did, he was wrong. I was a
firefighter for a lot of years.

He was a paid department chief, with over 20 years.

Entered a lot of buning buildings, and I
was a chief also. 50 gallons won't do squat.

It will wreck everything in the house, from the sheetrock right down
to the trusses. If he could get by with 50gal, it was salvageable. A
bigger fire, requiring more water, not so much.

We would easily dump a 1500
gallon TP to save a house. We had 2000 gallon tankers dumping into portable
ponds to back that up. We saved a lot of structures using thousands of
gallons of water. Yes - smoke damage is a big thing but they have cleanup
techonologies that address this - and have had for years. Both smoke and
water damage can be dealt with. You don't just dump all this water into the
structure. It's misted in (fogged in), to create steam to kill the fire.
There's much more to fighting fires than this guy would lead you to believe.

They carried 1000gal on the pumper. He guaranteed that the house
would be a total if he used it. It wasn't there for home fires.
Sorry, I'll take the word of someone I new (very well) over someone on
the Usenet.