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A few weeks ago several Eden Prairie Firefighters decided to participate in a stair climb at a downtown Minneapolis office building. They made the climb of 39 Floors in just over 12 minutes in full gear, quite the accomplishment! I am glad they didn’t ask me to participate with them, I doubt their time would have been anywhere near the astonishing feat of 12 minutes, old guys aren’t going to set many records climbing 39 flights of stairs. Nice going to everyone involved!
Lately I have gotten a lot of questions about how a single candle can cause such large scale fires. Well, the truth of the matter is, that almost all fires start out small. And the single flame of a candle is very capable of starting any nearby combustible on fire and then the fire grows from there and the rest, as they say, is history. The “Big Three” for starting fires are: Cooking, Improperly Discarded Smoking Materials and Candles. If we could, as a society, wipe out those three causes we could eliminate probably 90% of all fires.
Below is a picture taken at a house fire in Chanhassen, this past weekend. It was Sunday evening and temps were already below zero, cold temperatures make a fire fight especially challenging. Equipment and people freeze up quickly so fire crews need to be rotated faster than normal. Eden Prairie along with Victoria, Excelsior and Chaska assisted Chanhassen.
The house suffered major damage and the preliminary cause appears to be, yes you guessed it, candles. I have written about this topic before, but it bears a review since the same causes keep dominating the list of why fires start. This is not new news but the same old news repeated time and time again across the Country. Think about what you can do to avoid becoming a contributor to the “Big Three” and take action.
Last night the Fire Department was called to a car fire involving three vehicles. This is not a usual occurrence in our every day responses. The first car was occupied when it abruptly caught on fire, parked immediately next to the first car was a second car, which also happened to be down wind and down hill from the first car. When cars catch fire they burn very rapidly and a lot of combustible fluids leak out and run, in this case down hill to the next car. The third car was down hill and down wind of the second car, not good. Aiding in fire spread was a moderate wind.
Below are three pictures taken in sequence to show the volume of fire that is generated when a fire like this gets going and how crazy the visibility gets when firefighters attack the fire.
Another item of note, in the second and third pictures, is the fact that there are three different colored helmets visible. The red helmet is the Lieutenant, the yellow is for a probationary firefighter and the black helmet is a more veteran firefighter.
Despite the amount of fire present, nobody got hurt and that is always a good thing. In the modern age of vehicles it doesn’t take much to render them as “totals”, very little fire is needed and even the newest car is not worth repairing once it gets even a little exposure to fire. I am glad to report that nobody was injured in the fire, and that is always a good thing!
