The Old Folks Home

[CapricornFarm]

Downtown Woodland had a fire this summer that bunt down three houses and a bunch of out buildings.

These were old Victorian era houses and they burn very quickly! They were not built with modern fire suppression building designs.

I love Victorian homes, but couldn't afford to do all the work they need. Plus they're usually in town on a small lot. Not ready for that yet.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Before I started using wooden and hardware cloth boxes screwed into the wooden beams, we nearly had the barn in TN. burn down! The goats knocked it down, and it landed in hay!. Luckily I was outside as usual, and saw smoke coming out of the metal roof! I went in and dumped a couple buckets of water on the hay, and started building light boxes !

 

[Nomadicus]

Good Morning Old Folks. Mid 70's here today and I enjoy being outside getting some things done that I really need to get done.

 

[Sally PB]

WOW!!!

Yeah. I was awed.

I have had immense respect for fire fighters and other first responders. It went up 100-fold that day.

 

[sourland]

Good morning.

 

[getaclue]

The Fire Dept. here has a trailer that they use to teach fire safety to the public. You go in the door on one end of the trailer, and have to crawl, and feel your way around to get safely to the other door. There are no electric lights, and it's kind of dark inside. It's filled with cotton candy smoke. There are heating elements in some of the doors, so those doors get warm, and some of the door knobs get warm too. They don't get hot enough to burn anyone. Warm doors, and doors with warm doorknobs are not to be opened, since there's probably a fire behind them. They'll take it to schools, and community events when asked. When possible, they'll train people to use the fire hoses too.

Before we moved in here, we rented a house. One night, Dh woke up, because he was smelling that electrical, wire melting type smell. We walked all through the house. Nothing even closely suspicious. The smell was only in one area of the house, which was down a hallway. There was nothing plugged in, no night light or anything, and the walls were not warm, etc. After a short time, Dh called the fire dept. When they arrived, he told told them it might be coming from the attic, and part of the A/C unit was up there.

They brought in a camera. It was a FLIR type camera that had been specially programmed for firefighters, to detect heat signatures. The camera also sent the images, and other imformation to a tablet. Sure enough, the attic had a hot spot. The cautiously climed into the attic, and there was nothing the normal sensed would have been able to detect, except the smell. No billowing smoke, no sparks, nothing. That camera showed them it was behind a panel on the A/C unit up there. They cautiously opened the pannel, and when the air hit it, it flared up. We turned off the A/C unit, which surprisingly was still running as usual. They used a type of fire extinguisher to take care of it. It's not like you can spray water, or a liquid based fire retardant into an attic, onto an electrical panel.

Make no mistake, they saved our bacon, and we were grateful. It was impressive they way they detected, and solved the problem. They took great pains to do the least amount of damage possible, and for the most part, they cleaned up after themselves. I called the Fire Cheif's wife the next day, and told her to tell her husband we were very impressed with how they handled everything BUT not even one of the firefighters looked like the hot guys in their calandars. She got a good laugh out of that. Yeah, in all her years attending events with her husband, she assured me that most of them did NOT look anything close to the ones in the calandars.

 

[microchick]

Thank you! I estimate about 10". Left her at the studio in Danville so she can get fired.
What's a peedoodle? I am sure I don't want any!

Peedoodle. Line from an old Harrison Ford movie where he partners up with a Rabi in the (If I remember right) old west. The Rabi was always doing stuff that could potentially get them both killed. At one point, Ford looks at the guy and says 'Rabi, you give me the peedoodles.' or something to that effect

Morning everyone. Going to be close to 60 here today. I think it's Indian Summer after having our 17 degree morning the other day. DH says no, not yet. But the next week or so is highs in the upper 60s so I'll take whatever I can get so I can get the coop winterized.

Have a good day everyone!

 

[microchick]

My only experience with fires was at the nursing home/rehab center where I worked back in Il.

One evening during dinner time one of the aids noticed smoke coming up from one of the wall mounted electric heaters after a resident hit it with his wheelchair. We went into emergency mode, pulled all the people from the dining area and behind fire doors and called 911.

I grabbed a fire extinguisher and stood by the smoking unit ready to blast it at the first signs of fire until the fire dept arrived to take over.

The local fire fighters were known to be 'buff'. Big strong, strappingly handsome pin up calendar examples of masculinity. So naturally all of us female nurses were standing back with our mouths open and our pulses racing watching them work. At one point one of the nursing administrators who was standing beside me leaned over and said 'If I set myself on fire do you think one of them would come over and throw himself on me to smother out the flames?'

It was one of those times I had to leave the area to keep from cracking up laughing in front of everyone.

Luckily that was my only experience with fire, thank God.

 

[Nomadicus]

It's bright and sunny out so I'm going out to see if my chickens know what peedoodles are.

 

[getaclue]

Sequel, if/when you get another receiver, I have a tip for you. After all the calibration is done, put on a surround sound video. Jump around a little. If everything sounds good, but the voices are a bit too low, go into the speaker settings. In the settings you will see each speaker listed, with a decibel/dB number next to it. Increase the decibel/dB level gradually on the Center speaker, until the voices are louder. This way the music, and sound effects don't knock you out of your seat, while you have to strain to hear the voices. Depending on your setup, you can also decrease the decibel/dB setting for your subwoofer a little too, which helps with this as well.