Fires from the sky

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wildwobby

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wildwobby
Yesterday when I went flying, I saw a house totally engulfed in flames. It was quite a site from 1500AGL. The house was pretty big too. I guess it is sort of creepy of me, but it was cool to see a **** load of fire trucks spraying water on this thing.

Has anyone else seen this sort of thing from the sky?

It really must suck for the people who owned the house.... On the way back a good hour and a half later, the thing was smoldering (but not flames), and it was a pile of ashes as opposed to the house. It was really easy to find though, you could see the smoke plume from quite a distance.
 
Saw one from the ground. When I saw the smoke I started running to where it originated to determine if my assistance was required when I saw the sight was covered with firefighters. Turns out the building was going to be demolished, but they burned it instead to give the firefighters training.
 
ive never seen a house or similar structure burn from the air but have seen some major car accidents and whatnot with lots of emergency vehicles.

the other day i thermalled off a couple of farm fields that were being burned. good lift, but stinky. good thing i packed my inhaler.
 
Saw a fairly large ship on fire once, off the coast, just south of Rockland, Me. We told the controllers (Navy Brunswick) and gave them a range and bearing off two VORs when we passed over it. They said they'd send someone to have a look. The towering black smoke was hard to miss; I find it hard to believe that the P-3s couldn't find it quickly. Never did hear what that was or how it ended.

Of course, when I worked at the TV station in Des Moines, we had the only helicopter in the city (other than the hospitals), so we would find fires and keep an eye on fleeing criminals for local authorities all the time. That was a ton of fun!
 
Come fall, it's not uncommon to see smoke from drainage ditches being cleared around farms. I angled towards them to find, so far, it was nothing to be excited about. They seem to wait for the wind to blow down the ditch before torching it.
 
Prevented a forest fire a couple years ago. Spotted it from the air, took the fire chief out so he could see where the beginnings of it was from the air, and then they took a ground crew out to extenguish it.
 
I saw a HUGE barn fire a couple months ago on the way back from Schaumburg, with no emergency vehicles on site. Reported it to Approach, they called it in, and I kept on flying.

It was pretty impressive, though, I could see the flames from >5 miles away, and the smoke plume about as soon as we were in the air.
 
I have seen many brush fires from the air while flying in the Deep South. Saw my own house burning 13 years ago. Fire is not a recommended way to remodel.
 
john smith said:
I have seen many brush fires from the air while flying in the Deep South. Saw my own house burning 13 years ago. Fire is not a recommended way to remodel.
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I 100% disagree having been through it myself. Always better to let the insurance pay for a planned remodel than out of your own pocket.
 
EdFred said:
I 100% disagree having been through it myself. Always better to let the insurance pay for a planned remodel than out of your own pocket.
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Its the unplanned remodeling that makes it unpleasant.
Another friend once asked the question, "How do you start a flood?"
 
john smith said:
Its the unplanned remodeling that makes it unpleasant.
Another friend once asked the question, "How do you start a flood?"
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There are many controlled leaks into any home. Washer, kitchen sink, bathroom, etc. All that is keeping them from flooding the home is an easily burst thin tube with a $0.02 rubber gasket.
 
I saw what I thought a grain silo on fire. As I got closer I saw it was a pretty large chicken farm + silo on fire. The pyrocumulus rose above my altitude of 9,500 msl (9,195 agl). It was a spectacular cloud set against the bright blue sky.

I also saw a double trailer stacked with oat hay on fire just as the driver pulled onto the side of the road. I circled once and by then the truck was fully engulfed.
 
I saw a massive fire on a night flight one time. Really awesome sight.

I saw this one while flying traffic watch once:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnflygirl/492089861/

Then this house burned down the day before I flew traffic watch:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnflygirl/492089861/

I hate I wasn't flying traffic watch while that fire happened. That one would have been a good one from the air.

Then for added measure....Raleigh's pride and joy....their 2004 Pierce Tiller Truck aka "Hook and Ladder Truck" was totaled on Friday. Here are some pictures from that too.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnflygirl/3710595035/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnflygirl/3710592123/
 
Richard said:
I also saw a double trailer stacked with oat hay on fire just as the driver pulled onto the side of the road. I circled once and by then the truck was fully engulfed.
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First thing to do when your trailer starts on fire: Pull over and DROP IT.

Too few drivers think of that, and they lose all their belongings when the tractor goes up too...
 
Last week I saw a huge new & unoccupied apartment complex burn in Renton Wa. I first saw the smoke from Tacoma, 30+ miles away. By the time I overflew Seatac, @ 8 miles away the flames were clearly visible. The smoke clouded the sky at least ten miles downwind by then.
DaveR
 
On our flight out to Las Vegas, we reported no less than 3 wildfires out in the forest.

See em all the time out here.
 
SkyHog said:
On our flight out to Las Vegas, we reported no less than 3 wildfires out in the forest.

See em all the time out here.
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Saw a ton of 'em on my trip out west last summer, and plenty of TFR's to go along with 'em (at least the ones that were being fought)... Kinda different from structure fires.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
First thing to do when your trailer starts on fire: Pull over and DROP IT.

Too few drivers think of that, and they lose all their belongings when the tractor goes up too...
Click to expand...
Surely you know much more about it than I, but one time while driving on Main St through town I did witness a hay truck on fire. The car in front of me and behind the truck started honking like crazy which got my attention. That's when I saw a hay bale at the very rear of the back trailer and on top of the load was smoldering. By the time we got the driver to pull over the entire back trailer was engulfed. Within a few short minutes the entire rig was engulfed. I suppose a professional driver who kept his wits coulda' disconnected in time.
 
SkyHog said:
On our flight out to Las Vegas, we reported no less than 3 wildfires out in the forest.

See em all the time out here.
Click to expand...
One flight between Salt Lake and Pendleton, OR I had to divert for no less than 23 fires. The air was thick with smoke and air attack traffic especially west of Boise. Smoke up to the FL and traffic to 120.
 
wildwobby said:
Has anyone else seen this sort of thing from the sky?
Click to expand...

Sure did..back in February. A historic old house in Clarke County (Boyce), VA went up in flames while I was up flying practice approaches. The house was(is?) literally a few thousand yards from the FAF for the ILS at KOKV. Family was out of town. Safety pilot had me pull off my hood to see it as we passed over.

Greg
 
tonycondon said:
ive never seen a house or similar structure burn from the air but have seen some major car accidents and whatnot with lots of emergency vehicles.

the other day i thermalled off a couple of farm fields that were being burned. good lift, but stinky. good thing i packed my inhaler.
Click to expand...

I think it would be neat to fly up near Manhattan, KS when they burn the grass on the flint hills. I remember in school when it was neat see'n a long line of small fire along the hills. All a controlled burn, for those that don't know.
 
I can still remember seeing a portion of the city of Newark, NJ burning during the riots in the 1960s when we were landing there in an airliner. That must have made quite an impression because I couldn't have been very old and I still remember it.
 
The last flight that my son took with me, we saw what looked like a big fire - impressive plume of black smoke moving slowly along the horizon... As I turned towards it, my subconcious that the that smoke was progressing upwind... Well, after we got about 5-7 miles closer we saw it was a steam train (we learned it was the one they used in the recent kids movie, Polar Express, and was touring Michigan)... The amount of solid black smoke from that stack was an impressive sight - and I would not want to live next to the tracks in the steam era...

denny-o
 
Once was on downwind when tower asked me to divert a little and see what the smoke was about. Circled a couple of times and let tower know that a farmhouse was burning. Tower called the fire department with my directions to the fire and before too long the farmhouse was a soggy, smoldering mess.
 
At our recent Cavalcade of Planes, we had a Sikorsky doing demo water drops for the crowd. As they were landing, people started seeing smoke on the horizon. Turns out that a house just a few blocks from the airport had caught fire and was burning nicely. Some people were saying that we had set the fire for a demonstration! :) (No, they didn't use the helicopter on it, though they did make an announcement about the fire on the loudspeaker to assuage any fears that it may be aviation-related.)
 
Richard said:
Surely you know much more about it than I, but one time while driving on Main St through town I did witness a hay truck on fire. The car in front of me and behind the truck started honking like crazy which got my attention. That's when I saw a hay bale at the very rear of the back trailer and on top of the load was smoldering. By the time we got the driver to pull over the entire back trailer was engulfed. Within a few short minutes the entire rig was engulfed. I suppose a professional driver who kept his wits coulda' disconnected in time.
Click to expand...

When I was motivated (read: in a big hurry) I could drop one trailer and hook up to the next one in 5 minutes. So, just a drop can be done pretty quickly. There's only three steps: Crank the gear down, pull the 5th wheel release, and disconnect the hoses/cables (3). Then you just pull away from it.

I was on the accident review committee at my previous job, and we did have some truck fires. One was a load of sawdust... Driver figured out that it was on fire, so what's he do? Pull over and call THE COMPANY. Should have pulled over while calling 911, dropped the trailer, and THEN called the company. :frown2:
 
wildwobby said:
...
Has anyone else seen this sort of thing from the sky?
.....
.
Click to expand...


Saw a large oil refinery burning very brightly one night. It was casting shadows in the cockpit at FL350. About a week later, saw a rail yard completely engulfed in smoke and flames during the day. You couldn't tell it was a rail yard except for the tracks leading in and out. Didn't get to hang around either site and admire the view since the locals were a little upset that we had just dropped about 14 tons of high explosive on them.:target::D
 
flyingcheesehead said:
When I was motivated (read: in a big hurry) I could drop one trailer and hook up to the next one in 5 minutes. So, just a drop can be done pretty quickly. There's only three steps: Crank the gear down, pull the 5th wheel release, and disconnect the hoses/cables (3). Then you just pull away from it.
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Kent, how strong are the connections for the hoses/cables? In a real hurry (big fire, could you do the first two steps, then pull away and rip the cables free?
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Kent, how strong are the connections for the hoses/cables? In a real hurry (big fire, could you do the first two steps, then pull away and rip the cables free?
Click to expand...

The hoses are easy - The connections are called "glad hands" and look like this:

7327.jpg


The connection is basically two of these - Imagine another one in the opposite orientation. They just twist together, and they're very quick to release - A second, maybe.

The electrical connection is a bit tougher. This is what it looks like at the trailer:

gh0.jpg


The red and blue lines are the service and emergency air lines, respectively. The black one in the middle is the electrical connection. You can see the red flap that protects the socket on the trailer when not in use sitting on top of the connector - The flap is spring-loaded and has a tooth on it that catches a ridge on top of the plug to keep it plugged in. To disconnect, you pull up on the flap, and then you generally have to do a bunch of wiggling to get the plug loose. There's a similar setup where the other end of the cable plugs into the back of the tractor, but that end is almost never disconnected. Even with the wiggling, though, it only takes 10-20 seconds to get the plug loose.

The most time-consuming part of dropping a trailer is just cranking the gear down. It takes about 30 cranks in the high gear, and if the trailer is in good shape and you're good at it, you can crank at maybe 120 RPM.

Really, I would think that if my truck was on fire I'd be motivated enough to get it dropped in about a minute once I was stopped. 15 seconds to crank the gear, 5 to pull the 5th wheel release, 5 to pop the air lines, 10 for the pigtail (electrical), and the rest to move around and to actually drive the truck out from under the trailer.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
When I was motivated (read: in a big hurry) I could drop one trailer and hook up to the next one in 5 minutes. So, just a drop can be done pretty quickly. There's only three steps: Crank the gear down, pull the 5th wheel release, and disconnect the hoses/cables (3). Then you just pull away from it.

I was on the accident review committee at my previous job, and we did have some truck fires. One was a load of sawdust... Driver figured out that it was on fire, so what's he do? Pull over and call THE COMPANY. Should have pulled over while calling 911, dropped the trailer, and THEN called the company. :frown2:
Click to expand...
Ha! That's like dropping the airplane to pick up the microphone.

My experience is sawdust smolders. Hay bales almost explode into an inferno. I think it would take some big brass ones to move toward the oncoming fire to crank the gear.
 
maddog52 said:
Saw a large oil refinery burning very brightly one night. It was casting shadows in the cockpit at FL350. About a week later, saw a rail yard completely engulfed in smoke and flames during the day. You couldn't tell it was a rail yard except for the tracks leading in and out. Didn't get to hang around either site and admire the view since the locals were a little upset that we had just dropped about 14 tons of high explosive on them.:target::D
Click to expand...
You da man! :)
 
Richard said:
My experience is sawdust smolders. Hay bales almost explode into an inferno. I think it would take some big brass ones to move toward the oncoming fire to crank the gear.
Click to expand...

Problem is, sawdust smoldering inside a van trailer isn't visible until it's BURNING enough to melt holes in the roof/walls.

Also, the story above said a bale on the back of the 2nd trailer was burning - All the disconnect stuff is at the front. Sure, you might lose two trailers instead of one, but better that than the whole rig. Trailers (and hay) are cheap in comparison. Our tractors cost $117,000 apiece when purchased in quantities of 100.
 
Everskyward said:
I can still remember seeing a portion of the city of Newark, NJ burning during the riots in the 1960s when we were landing there in an airliner. That must have made quite an impression because I couldn't have been very old and I still remember it.
Click to expand...

Ah, ya gotta love NJ... or not.

wildwobby said:
Has anyone else seen this sort of thing from the sky?
Click to expand...

How about this? I'd certainly call those fires, and what they do to put them out is incredible! They do VFR with IFR inside, not on top :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbHgireZrY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-o5ct0zZrc
 
flyingcheesehead said:
The hoses are easy - The connections are called "glad hands" and look like this:

7327.jpg


The connection is basically two of these - Imagine another one in the opposite orientation. They just twist together, and they're very quick to release - A second, maybe.

The electrical connection is a bit tougher. This is what it looks like at the trailer:

gh0.jpg


The red and blue lines are the service and emergency air lines, respectively. The black one in the middle is the electrical connection. You can see the red flap that protects the socket on the trailer when not in use sitting on top of the connector - The flap is spring-loaded and has a tooth on it that catches a ridge on top of the plug to keep it plugged in. To disconnect, you pull up on the flap, and then you generally have to do a bunch of wiggling to get the plug loose. There's a similar setup where the other end of the cable plugs into the back of the tractor, but that end is almost never disconnected. Even with the wiggling, though, it only takes 10-20 seconds to get the plug loose.

The most time-consuming part of dropping a trailer is just cranking the gear down. It takes about 30 cranks in the high gear, and if the trailer is in good shape and you're good at it, you can crank at maybe 120 RPM.

Really, I would think that if my truck was on fire I'd be motivated enough to get it dropped in about a minute once I was stopped. 15 seconds to crank the gear, 5 to pull the 5th wheel release, 5 to pop the air lines, 10 for the pigtail (electrical), and the rest to move around and to actually drive the truck out from under the trailer.
Click to expand...


If it were me, I'd pull the stop, release the air and take off. The trailer will stay there, fix the lines later.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Kent, how strong are the connections for the hoses/cables? In a real hurry (big fire, could you do the first two steps, then pull away and rip the cables free?
Click to expand...

I'm thinking first one step - pull the release on the hitch. Let the nose of the trailer fall when the truck pulls out from under...

But then, I'm chicken.
 
BigAL said:
If it were me, I'd pull the stop, release the air and take off. The trailer will stay there, fix the lines later.
Click to expand...

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
I'm thinking first one step - pull the release on the hitch. Let the nose of the trailer fall when the truck pulls out from under...

But then, I'm chicken.
Click to expand...

Obviously, the 5th wheel release is the important part. Hoses 2nd, 'cuz they'll still be there after the fire. Gear 3rd... Though if the load is heavy enough, when the trailer comes off the 5th wheel it may land on the rear drive tires with enough friction to prevent you from pulling out from under it, at which point all you can do is grab a few personal belongings and bail out.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Though if the load is heavy enough, when the trailer comes off the 5th wheel it may land on the rear drive tires with enough friction to prevent you from pulling out from under it, at which point all you can do is grab a few personal belongings and bail out.
Click to expand...
Once again, I done learned something.
 
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