In article 4u1%e.84538$DW1.48492@fed1read06,
"SteveB" wrote:

Been there, done that. Don't like it. One of our house fires started
in an unattended house on a day with 40 MPH winds. Can you say
"blowtorch"? The only thing we could do, as you say, was protect the
exposures.


The joke in southern Louisiana for the local volunteer fire department was,
"They always get there in time to save the foundation and fireplace."

Methinks that qualifies as what they call "gallows humor", no?

Basically, that's when the FD got here for ours - But as I said, I can't
blame them. They had 20 miles to travel, with most of the last 4 being
steep uphills, and the last 2 of that switchback gravel. I do the trip
in my wannabe-sports-car in about half an hour when I drive with a heavy
foot and no traffic. I am, to be perfectly honest, quite impressed that
the first truck was able to get here in "only" 45 minutes. An hour or
longer for first ground-based response wouldn't have surprised me even a
little bit.

Air response, on the other hand, was fairly quick, since we've got the
tanker base about 8 minutes away by air. CDF Air-attack was circling
overhead about 15-20 minutes after the initial call, with chatter on the
scanner telling me that they had a borate bomber in the air and orbiting
the tanker base, two more on the strip with engines hot and waiting for
the "go" with an ETA of 10 minutes, the crew for a fourth prepping, a
dozer crew on standby, plus two choppers with dip-buckets (Big
advantage: the lake that more-or-less surrounds us is mighty
conveniently located for firefighting purposes if you've got aircraft
that can dip out of it) en-route from Grass Valley with an ETA of 12
minutes - Since the area is definite "wilderness interface", they went
full response right from jump in an effort to keep it from getting off
the property. Thankfully, it worked. Before all was said and done, over
15 ground units and 8 aircraft, plus I-don't-even-know-how-many bodies
got involved in stomping this one out.

Unfortunately, keeping it from turning into a full-scale California
wildfire was the only thing they had any prayer of doing by the time
they were able to get bodies on-scene. The house was pretty much "It's
only still standing 'cause the wind hasn't blown hard enough to knock
the last of it over yet" when the first truck rolled up the driveway,
with some of the closer trees starting to catch. They put the hose on
the propane tank, and went to work knocking out the trees that were
burning, and didn't turn their attention to the house proper until the
second and third trucks rolled in. By then, most of the house had fallen
into the foundation, turning the whole mess into a pretty good rendition
of the ultimate barbecue pit - Trying to get any closer than about 50
feet was a good way to remove any facial hair you might have been
wearing...

--
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Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
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