Home depot fire in San Jose 1

[Retiredat46]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_XFtUw3CPA

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/crews-battle-fire-at-home-depot-in-south-san-jose/2859472/

Obviously there's a lot of flammable stuff in a Home Depot store, but wouldn't they take that into consideration when designing the building fire protection systems? What could have gone so terribly wrong?

 

[FacEngrPE]

A link in retiredat46's citations is another ongoing large fire in the same city.
nbcbayarea: Benicia Residents, Officials Concerned as Large Benicia Port Fire Continues to Burn By NBC Bay Area staff and Bay City News • Published April 9, 2022 • Updated 4

vallejosun: Four-alarm fire burns wharf at Port of Benicia By Scott Morris Apr 09, 2022
Construction of the pier reported to be involved in the fire is reported to be concrete deck on wood pilings. The fire is under the concrete deck, so it is largely inaccessible.
Video Residents, Officials Concerned as Large Benicia Port Fire Continues to Burn 8,912 views Apr 10, 2022

 

[itsmoked]

Just competing with Walmart.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[spsalso]

"A link in retiredat46's citations is another ongoing large fire in the same city."

Benicia is not in San Jose. They are separate cities 50 miles apart.



spsalso

 

[TugboatEng]

Here is the Benicia fire from yesterday. Taken from the local beer fest.

 

[FacEngrPE]

When looking at 50 miles apart in California from the east coast it looks close.

Today's update

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2022/0...siderably-expected-to-burn-throughout-sunday/

 

[itsmoked]

Lovely, a Benicia fire, two weeks after everyone is saying if anything happens to a refinery the price of fuel will go up even higher.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[monkeydog]

Well, at least there was beer.

 

[TugboatEng]

It's even worse than you think, itsmoked. That pier serves the Valero refinery. It's the only refinery in the bay area with a coker plant. They export the coke to China for steel production. This will also increase steel prices.

The pier is also used to automotive deliveries. GM and Toyota as well as German makes offload their vehicles on this pier.

The beer fest got over sold. 3000 people there. You could hardly move. We left early.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Fire fighting a wood pier fire is truly difficult

https://www.fireengineering.com/leadership/fighting-pier-fires/[/URL] Fire Engineering: Fighting Pier Fires]Any city with an extensive waterfront developed for transportation, with docks, piers and warehouses, has need for a procedure to prevent the spread of fire underneath the piers. The officers and men stationed in the harbor district must possess, besides the fire fighting knowledge common to all in the department, a special intimacy with the shoreline and everything built upon it. Experience with pier fires has shown the extreme danger in the spread of fire through wood piling and other combustible materials in the inaccessible spaces under pier docks.

 

[Retiredat46]

It appears the pier fire is much more consequential and interesting than the loss of a Home Depot store fifty miles away.

Forty years ago I gathered a bunch of cut-off pile caps from a construction site to build a retaining wall at the edge of my property. Several years later the brush on the neighbor's property caught fire, and the pile caps started burning. A single row in the open with easy access and plenty of water was very difficult to put out. I can easily imagine how incredibly challenging the pier fire was to fight. What a mess it'll be to clean up to clean up, too. Thousands of tons of broken concrete on top of submerged hazardous waste sounds like a nightmare.

 

[TugboatEng]

This particular pier has an asphalt top which is also flammable. It is a very old pier.

 

[itsmoked]

Just imagine the political/city stonewalling associated with replacing it. Gads.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[TugboatEng]

Apparently Long Beach's $190 million boondoggle of a fireboat has the ability to extinguish under pier fires with low monitors that it can project under the pier.

We don't have as many commercially important wooden piers in the bay area, we now have one less. The wooden docks around me were mostly burned by tweakers in the 1970's. Most of the commercial piers were built during WW2 or later and are concrete piles with a concrete deck.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Sorry what's a "tweaker" ?

 

[itsmoked]

Meth-head.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[Retiredat46]

A tweaker is someone who uses methamphetamine, and highly flammable benzene is used in making it.

Speaking of getting high...here's some pictures I took on a recent foggy morning climb.

 

[dik]

I see safety ropes... we never had/used that luxury.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Do you feel any better?

-Dik

 

[itsmoked]

Climbing a dying pine tree...
I think Retired might be a tweaker.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

ignore them, I like the fact that there are others equally as.... err like me out there.