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Wind whipped fires raging through Boulder County

131 points by dalrympm 5y ago

alexose 5y ago
Sounds like the same thing that happened in Santa Rosa in 2017 and Talent in 2020: Drought, wind, downed power lines. I live near Talent, and while I didn't lose my home it was one of the worst things I've ever lived through. If anyone from this area wants to talk, I'm game. Email's in my profile.
gizmo385 5y ago
Per the government briefing a couple hours ago, over 500 structures (which are mostly homes) have burned down. That number is likely higher now. Absolutely devastating.
Sparkle-san 5y ago
I'm from this area and still live close enough that I can see the smoke. We have been experiencing a drought, seeing temperatures reaching almost 70 in December, and broke the record this year for latest first snow fall. These fires started in the late morning possibly from a downed power line and by the early afternoon had spread rapidly. Hundreds of structures including entire subdivisions have burned to the ground without hours. If you're feeling generous, please consider making a donation at the link below. https://www.commfound.org/grants/get-grant/Boulder-County-Wildfire-Fund https://www.commfound.org/grants/get-grant/Boulder-County-Wi...
- elpakal 5y ago
  In Florida now but I live in NW Arvada, watching updates in horror, but didn’t they say winds were over 100 mph too? Add that to the cocktail you describe above, and boom.
  - JPKab 5y ago
    I also live in Northwest Arvada and we had 115 mph winds today. My coworkers were hearing my house rattle when I was on a call today. If your house is close to 93 and 72 you probably have a ton of debris in your yard. The Chinook winds were the worst I've seen. When I heard there were fires I knew it was going to be bad. But I couldn't imagine that it was going to burn down entire shopping centers.
deft 5y ago
This is terrifying, the wind is letting the fire jump huge gaps.
justinator 5y ago
I don’t believe danger is imminent but it is incredible how close this fire is to the former Rocky Flats. This is the second time in as many years I’ve been surprised to see fires close enough to be viewed from the front yard - in exact opposite directions. I’m at the N Boulder rec center with my partner (a reporter) covering this for the NYT. Thankfully it seems quiet and the wind is dying down. Pray for snow!
- elpakal 5y ago
  Didn’t they confirm over 600 homes burned? And the entire towns of Louisville and Superior evacuated (as well as a big hospital - Avista). That seems dangerous to me!
  - sritchie 5y ago
    I am in Boulder too and I think the comment means, imminent in Boulder proper. But you are of course right, this is a horrifying thing happening right now for many people just a few miles away.
    - justinator 5y ago
      I meant imminent to the Rocky Flats area. Of course all the buildings were razed, but I would assume it wouldn't be a Good Thing for that place to also be on fire.
      - nyokodo 5y ago
        > I would assume it wouldn't be a Good Thing for that place to also be on fire. The radioactive stuff was all removed or well buried. I’m more worried about the large subdivision built on the site burning down.
        olliej 5y ago
        I think the issue is how well remediated it’s actually is. I presume that there are a reasonable number of people who doubt that the remediation was actually complete enough to be safe against wild fires
pm90 5y ago
Is this due to the unusually warm winter?
- rconti 5y ago
  I'm not a Coloradan, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Boulder on my trip this summer... It's the end of December and apparently there's no snow (!!?) at 5000ft in Colorado? Insane.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    We've gotten snow, and it's not unusual for 5000ft to not have snow right now (that's even lower elevation than boulder proper), but it's way less total snow than we normally have gotten by now. That being said, it's also pretty normal for a la nina year to be light on precipitation early in the winter, and we get it all during the spring.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    No moisture in an arid climate with lots of sunshine? Insane.
  - volkl48 5y ago
    The overall dryness is not normal, but Denver/Boulder does not generally have snow on the ground consistently in winter. (Up in the mountains is obviously a different story). The joke in Denver is sometimes that the city's snow plowing plan for the sidestreets appears to be "wait for it to melt" ....which works most of the time. Even in January the average day is over 45F, which combined with the sunny climate often makes short work of snow.
  - davesque 5y ago
    Lifelong Boulderite here. No snow on the ground is very typical during winter. If it does snow, it often doesn't stick around for very long since Colorado gets a lot of sunshine. However, it has still been unusually dry. Fires have been getting worse and worse every year, but always during the summer and fall months. I've never seen anything like this during winter in my whole life.
goopthink 5y ago
I live in the neighborhood, but we are just outside of the evacuation zone. This part of Colorado is — in other times — a really nice mixed-use set of communities. It has a lot of open fields, farms, businesses, and “old town” town centers right alongside very dense apartment buildings and single family homes. We haven’t had snow or rain in almost two months, and everything is very dry. I saw the wind bringing flames along these open fields (like kindling) right into Louisville and Superior, and then it lights up the neighborhood, spreading house to house, fueled by wind that has brought down trees and power lines (friends in Boulder getting some rolling blackouts earlier). These nice parks and open fields are like turbo boosts from neighborhood to neighborhood. Any other combination - not as dry, not as windy, and it would have been a small localized fire. Everyone is packing their cars even if outside of the mandatory or pre-evacuation zones. We are supposed to have a massive snowstorm tomorrow morning as well, which makes this very painful - large fires normally burn in loosely populated areas, but this is as dense as any major suburban center.
- goopthink 5y ago
  Here’s a good visual of that in action: https://twitter.com/ShaulTurner/status/1476722513195405315?s=20 https://twitter.com/ShaulTurner/status/1476722513195405315?s... # But really, any #MarshallFire twitter post right now.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Nitter link: https://nitter.kavin.rocks/search?q=%23MarshallFire https://nitter.kavin.rocks/search?q=%23MarshallFire
- 01100011 5y ago
  > Any other combination - not as dry, not as windy, and it would have been a small localized fire. If what I heard was correct and they're having 110 mph wind gusts, any fire is likely to spread, even in a neighborhood. I agree the open space makes it spread even faster, but with that kind of wind, fire reaches a new level of destruction.
jcampbell1 5y ago
Here is a photo of the current situation from central boulder. The 100mph wind gusts caused the fire to jump dozens of times. https://postimg.cc/CzdZ7Bqq https://postimg.cc/CzdZ7Bqq
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Could see it 8 miles away, from my house near North Table Mountain about 3 hours ago.
Scaevolus 5y ago
I had the pleasure of evacuating twice from this fire (Superior, then Broomfield). 80mph+ wind gusts are crazy, and it's impossible to contain the fire until the wind dies down.
throwaway984393 5y ago
I'm wondering if fire-prone areas should be zoned to require fireproof building. No more wood homes/roofs. Europe generally doesn't use wood home construction, so doesn't seem crazy
- gkop 5y ago
  > if structures near fire-prone areas were designed and maintained to withstand fire, we might not need to fight some wildfires at all. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/ I think you might be getting downvoted for "fireproof" which sounds absolute, and is probably not realistic. But you're right that regulations should evolve to require responsible home design and maintenance in fire-prone areas!
  - Syonyk 5y ago
    ++ for an article that mentions Jack Cohen. If you want to understand wildfires, read everything he's written. He's basically the single handed Mythbusters of wildfire understanding, and has done things like "instrumented crown fires of test stands" to better understand radiant heat flux from actual fires.
- dntrkv 5y ago
  I’m not an expert in the matter, but I’ve heard that modern wood frames are just as good as steel frames. If the fire is close and strong enough to ignite a wood stud, the steel stud would already fail. Though would love input from an expert here.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Wouldn't the steel stud just structurally fail, rather than also becoming more fuel for the fire to spread to?
  - Syonyk 5y ago
    Not an expert, but have done a lot of reading and some writing on wildfires, fire resistant structures, etc. I live on a hill that catches fire rather more often than I really enjoy and spend a lot of my spring cutting firebreaks. Any sort of structure, wood or not, will withstand a huge radiant flux of energy before catching fire. Well, well beyond what will crispy fry a human, the siding may be charred, but it won't burn. Even wood siding tolerates a lot. What lights houses on fire are firebrands - "burning crap from the sky." Trees, mostly, embers, other houses... that's what catches things. Typically it will light some small stuff near the house first, or in the corners of the roof (pine needles are a common enough fuel source). At that point, you've got a far harder problem - direct flame impingement. If you get to that point, you are usually screwed. You can build fireproof roofs - I fully support pretty much anything in any areas requiring a Class A fireproof roof, which doesn't really mean much more than "being careful what you build, and not using wood shake." An asphalt shingle roof can often be Class A fireproof, and that tolerates a 2' x 2' bit of burning brand on the roof without burnthrough. The roof may not be in great shape, but an awful lot of "stuff on fire" can land on it, and if it's a properly constructed Class A roof, it won't penetrate to the building. The landscaping around the building is a harder problem. Within 30' or so, it generally has to "not burn." This can be from design, or from sprinklers, or... whatever. If the landscaping within 30' of a house is on fire, the house is likely to follow. If you keep that from lighting, the house stands a pretty good chance. ... yes, this means that in suburbia, if the house next door is on fire, you're screwed. Don't live in such tightly packed spaces. The next major problem are windows. If they fail, the house usually goes. They tolerate a lot, but in high wind storms, random debris can break the window, and then firebrands get in. Whoops. I would like to see some good studies on shutters, because they seem like the sort of thing that will make a very real difference on window breakage in storms, but they're not a thing anymore and probably won't come back. But look at the debris patterns when you find the news articles of the burned out neighborhoods. Almost always, you'll see intact lawns and vegetation around a burned out foundation. It's not a "wall of flame" marching through the neighborhood - it's the firebrands, blown by the wind, that you have to defend against. Unfortunately, when it comes to wildfires, when you've got things like 80 gusting 100, you're also just screwed. :/
dmckeon 5y ago
Driven by high winds into dense housing - those elements remind me of a 2017 fire that burned over 2,500 homes in Santa Rosa, California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire
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medntech 5y ago
Part of the medical evacuation. This is bad.
- medntech 5y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/boulder/comments/rsib19/good_samaritan_hospital_staff_keeping_watch_on/ https://www.reddit.com/r/boulder/comments/rsib19/good_samari...
kleinsch 5y ago
My house probably burned, we’ll find out in the morning. Family is safe, got out in time and we have a place to stay, so blessed in that regard. We just moved from the Bay Area last year. This isn’t an area in the wilderness, it’s suburbia. This would be like if 600 homes on the edge of Fremont or San Jose burned. Freak situation where we haven’t had rain in 3 months, winds were super high, temps were high for Dec, and it sounds like power lines went down. Unreal.
- JPKab 5y ago
  I live just south of Superior. Let me know if you need a place to stay and I can assist. My area has just been removed from the pre-evacuation zone, since the winds have finally subsided. For anyone that doesn't live here, this was caused by Chinook winds that were stronger than usual combined with extremely dry air and vegetation. My specific location had 115 mph gusts today. When you live here you get used to the Chinooks but today was extreme. Entire house was shaking. To add color to the comment above, it is indeed an extremely suburban area. The fire started on Marshall Mesa, which is a popular mountain biking trail. Notably if you go east from Marshall Mesa you suddenly hit a shopping center with a Costco and a Target. The fire went east and directly into the shopping center along with all of the homes clustered in the neighborhoods around it. Terrible, and with very little warning. I hope your house is okay. I'm very glad your family is safe.
- stevenwoo 5y ago
  The last fire came within five miles of Cupertino and people I know that live near to 280/Rancho San Antonio got evacuation warnings before the wind turned.
  - 01100011 5y ago
    It's only a matter of time before Los Gatos, Saratoga, Almaden, etc suffer major fire damage. CalFire defensible space recommendations are largely ignored.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
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pengaru 5y ago
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;@-105.2,40.0,12z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs...
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Adding the caption: NASA LANCE | FIRMS Fire Map. FIRMS Fire Map allows you to interactively browse the full archive of global active fire detections from MODIS and VIIRS. Near real-time fire data are available within approximately 3 hours of satellite overpass and imagery within 4-5 hours. DO NOT USE FOR EMERGENCY PLANNING OR RESPONSE. Data are not realtime, and local authorities should be given precedence. A slightly more useful view below: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;l:noaa20-viirs,viirs,modis_a,modis_t,countries,landsat_human;@-105.1,39.9,12z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs...
jkaptur 5y ago
I evacuated from Superior today and am grateful to be safe. It’s amazing how quickly the situation developed. If you’re reading this, I’d encourage you to look around and think about what you’d take and where you’d go if you had to leave right now.
tamaharbor 5y ago
Mother Nature sucks on occasion.
trembonator 5y ago
sounds 5y ago
This really hits home for me, this is not a brushfire in a wilderness. It's moving fast, too!
fblp 5y ago
So many of the fires in California have also been started by downed electrical lines. Although this is tragic, tech to help manage fires is coming along and states can raise their standards to encourage private companies to manage risk. This has happened in Victoria, Australia: https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-an-australian-state-faced-devastation-from-gridsparked-wildfires https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-an-australian-state-faced-deva...
dredmorbius 5y ago
Boulder Colorado Emergency Operations Centre ArcGIS fire evacuation zones map: https://bouldercounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=13ab214fe2bb4da5a850df0ca0f00fc5 https://bouldercounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/inde...
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robomartin 5y ago
This is horrible. I hope everyone is OK. Homes can be rebuilt. Life is what matters. About three years ago I had to do a bunch of research on fire resistant construction for a project. I came across something that is fantastic. Part of me doesn't understand why this isn't a requirement in fire-prone areas, if not every home and building. This is the product we used, of course, there are other manufacturers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVWVP3tKlZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVWVP3tKlZc No affiliation at all other than being a customer. Yes, we conducted our own tests before making the decision. It won't resist flames forever, but it absolutely delays the maximal burn event. In addition to this, it provides a potentially significant delay of the spread from structure to structure, particularly if the gap between structures is reasonable (say, 10 ft or more). In speaking to LA County permit authorities I learned that one of the problems using advanced technology is that the bureaucracy of the system gets in the way. It's truly sad. The way the engineers put it to me translates to: If we don't have a checkbox, you can't use it. Seriously. The only way to use it is for YOU to foot the bill and pay to conduct all the tests required to add the product to the approved materials list. This process, again, due to the bureaucracy, could take years. And, BTW, much as is the case with a lot of things in the US, obtaining approval in one county does not automatically allow someone to use it outside that county. Sometimes I think the US is a bunch of independent little kingdoms, much more so than a country. In our case we could not obtain approval because the material was not on the list. We provided tons of proof, even getting the CEO's of various intumescent coating companies involved. The approvals are very weird, for example, a product might be approved for outdoor use and not approved for indoor applications. No, not because it won't work or is toxic. More often than not it is because the tests were not conducted for that particular application and you are out of luck. You might be approved to paint your walls with this stuff but are not allowed to coat your framing, rafters, etc. with it. Crazy. We ended-up working around these barriers because this was a DoD project. They simply pulled rank and that was that.
mooreds 5y ago
Belatedly, here's a stream of updates from the Boulder County Office of Emergency Management: https://www.boulderoem.com/emergency-status/ https://www.boulderoem.com/emergency-status/

131 points by dalrympm 5y ago

Sounds like the same thing that happened in Santa Rosa in 2017 and Talent in 2020: Drought, wind, downed power lines. I live near Talent, and while I didn't lose my home it was one of the worst things I've ever lived through. If anyone from this area wants to talk, I'm game. Email's in my profile.

gizmo385 5y ago

Per the government briefing a couple hours ago, over 500 structures (which are mostly homes) have burned down. That number is likely higher now. Absolutely devastating.

Sparkle-san 5y ago

I'm from this area and still live close enough that I can see the smoke. We have been experiencing a drought, seeing temperatures reaching almost 70 in December, and broke the record this year for latest first snow fall. These fires started in the late morning possibly from a downed power line and by the early afternoon had spread rapidly. Hundreds of structures including entire subdivisions have burned to the ground without hours. If you're feeling generous, please consider making a donation at the link below. https://www.commfound.org/grants/get-grant/Boulder-County-Wildfire-Fund https://www.commfound.org/grants/get-grant/Boulder-County-Wi...

elpakal 5y ago
In Florida now but I live in NW Arvada, watching updates in horror, but didn’t they say winds were over 100 mph too? Add that to the cocktail you describe above, and boom.
- JPKab 5y ago
  I also live in Northwest Arvada and we had 115 mph winds today. My coworkers were hearing my house rattle when I was on a call today. If your house is close to 93 and 72 you probably have a ton of debris in your yard. The Chinook winds were the worst I've seen. When I heard there were fires I knew it was going to be bad. But I couldn't imagine that it was going to burn down entire shopping centers.

deft 5y ago

This is terrifying, the wind is letting the fire jump huge gaps.

justinator 5y ago

I don’t believe danger is imminent but it is incredible how close this fire is to the former Rocky Flats. This is the second time in as many years I’ve been surprised to see fires close enough to be viewed from the front yard - in exact opposite directions. I’m at the N Boulder rec center with my partner (a reporter) covering this for the NYT. Thankfully it seems quiet and the wind is dying down. Pray for snow!

elpakal 5y ago
Didn’t they confirm over 600 homes burned? And the entire towns of Louisville and Superior evacuated (as well as a big hospital - Avista). That seems dangerous to me!
- sritchie 5y ago
  I am in Boulder too and I think the comment means, imminent in Boulder proper. But you are of course right, this is a horrifying thing happening right now for many people just a few miles away.
  - justinator 5y ago
    I meant imminent to the Rocky Flats area. Of course all the buildings were razed, but I would assume it wouldn't be a Good Thing for that place to also be on fire.
    - nyokodo 5y ago
      > I would assume it wouldn't be a Good Thing for that place to also be on fire. The radioactive stuff was all removed or well buried. I’m more worried about the large subdivision built on the site burning down.
      - olliej 5y ago
        I think the issue is how well remediated it’s actually is. I presume that there are a reasonable number of people who doubt that the remediation was actually complete enough to be safe against wild fires

pm90 5y ago

Is this due to the unusually warm winter?

rconti 5y ago
I'm not a Coloradan, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Boulder on my trip this summer... It's the end of December and apparently there's no snow (!!?) at 5000ft in Colorado? Insane.
- monocasa 5y ago
  We've gotten snow, and it's not unusual for 5000ft to not have snow right now (that's even lower elevation than boulder proper), but it's way less total snow than we normally have gotten by now. That being said, it's also pretty normal for a la nina year to be light on precipitation early in the winter, and we get it all during the spring.
- kortilla 5y ago
  No moisture in an arid climate with lots of sunshine? Insane.
- volkl48 5y ago
  The overall dryness is not normal, but Denver/Boulder does not generally have snow on the ground consistently in winter. (Up in the mountains is obviously a different story). The joke in Denver is sometimes that the city's snow plowing plan for the sidestreets appears to be "wait for it to melt" ....which works most of the time. Even in January the average day is over 45F, which combined with the sunny climate often makes short work of snow.
- davesque 5y ago
  Lifelong Boulderite here. No snow on the ground is very typical during winter. If it does snow, it often doesn't stick around for very long since Colorado gets a lot of sunshine. However, it has still been unusually dry. Fires have been getting worse and worse every year, but always during the summer and fall months. I've never seen anything like this during winter in my whole life.

goopthink 5y ago

I live in the neighborhood, but we are just outside of the evacuation zone. This part of Colorado is — in other times — a really nice mixed-use set of communities. It has a lot of open fields, farms, businesses, and “old town” town centers right alongside very dense apartment buildings and single family homes. We haven’t had snow or rain in almost two months, and everything is very dry. I saw the wind bringing flames along these open fields (like kindling) right into Louisville and Superior, and then it lights up the neighborhood, spreading house to house, fueled by wind that has brought down trees and power lines (friends in Boulder getting some rolling blackouts earlier). These nice parks and open fields are like turbo boosts from neighborhood to neighborhood. Any other combination - not as dry, not as windy, and it would have been a small localized fire. Everyone is packing their cars even if outside of the mandatory or pre-evacuation zones. We are supposed to have a massive snowstorm tomorrow morning as well, which makes this very painful - large fires normally burn in loosely populated areas, but this is as dense as any major suburban center.

goopthink 5y ago
Here’s a good visual of that in action: https://twitter.com/ShaulTurner/status/1476722513195405315?s=20 https://twitter.com/ShaulTurner/status/1476722513195405315?s... # But really, any #MarshallFire twitter post right now.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Nitter link: https://nitter.kavin.rocks/search?q=%23MarshallFire https://nitter.kavin.rocks/search?q=%23MarshallFire
01100011 5y ago
> Any other combination - not as dry, not as windy, and it would have been a small localized fire. If what I heard was correct and they're having 110 mph wind gusts, any fire is likely to spread, even in a neighborhood. I agree the open space makes it spread even faster, but with that kind of wind, fire reaches a new level of destruction.

jcampbell1 5y ago

Here is a photo of the current situation from central boulder. The 100mph wind gusts caused the fire to jump dozens of times. https://postimg.cc/CzdZ7Bqq https://postimg.cc/CzdZ7Bqq

bitexploder 5y ago
Could see it 8 miles away, from my house near North Table Mountain about 3 hours ago.

Scaevolus 5y ago

I had the pleasure of evacuating twice from this fire (Superior, then Broomfield). 80mph+ wind gusts are crazy, and it's impossible to contain the fire until the wind dies down.

throwaway984393 5y ago

I'm wondering if fire-prone areas should be zoned to require fireproof building. No more wood homes/roofs. Europe generally doesn't use wood home construction, so doesn't seem crazy

gkop 5y ago
> if structures near fire-prone areas were designed and maintained to withstand fire, we might not need to fight some wildfires at all. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/ I think you might be getting downvoted for "fireproof" which sounds absolute, and is probably not realistic. But you're right that regulations should evolve to require responsible home design and maintenance in fire-prone areas!
- Syonyk 5y ago
  ++ for an article that mentions Jack Cohen. If you want to understand wildfires, read everything he's written. He's basically the single handed Mythbusters of wildfire understanding, and has done things like "instrumented crown fires of test stands" to better understand radiant heat flux from actual fires.
dntrkv 5y ago
I’m not an expert in the matter, but I’ve heard that modern wood frames are just as good as steel frames. If the fire is close and strong enough to ignite a wood stud, the steel stud would already fail. Though would love input from an expert here.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Wouldn't the steel stud just structurally fail, rather than also becoming more fuel for the fire to spread to?
- Syonyk 5y ago
  Not an expert, but have done a lot of reading and some writing on wildfires, fire resistant structures, etc. I live on a hill that catches fire rather more often than I really enjoy and spend a lot of my spring cutting firebreaks. Any sort of structure, wood or not, will withstand a huge radiant flux of energy before catching fire. Well, well beyond what will crispy fry a human, the siding may be charred, but it won't burn. Even wood siding tolerates a lot. What lights houses on fire are firebrands - "burning crap from the sky." Trees, mostly, embers, other houses... that's what catches things. Typically it will light some small stuff near the house first, or in the corners of the roof (pine needles are a common enough fuel source). At that point, you've got a far harder problem - direct flame impingement. If you get to that point, you are usually screwed. You can build fireproof roofs - I fully support pretty much anything in any areas requiring a Class A fireproof roof, which doesn't really mean much more than "being careful what you build, and not using wood shake." An asphalt shingle roof can often be Class A fireproof, and that tolerates a 2' x 2' bit of burning brand on the roof without burnthrough. The roof may not be in great shape, but an awful lot of "stuff on fire" can land on it, and if it's a properly constructed Class A roof, it won't penetrate to the building. The landscaping around the building is a harder problem. Within 30' or so, it generally has to "not burn." This can be from design, or from sprinklers, or... whatever. If the landscaping within 30' of a house is on fire, the house is likely to follow. If you keep that from lighting, the house stands a pretty good chance. ... yes, this means that in suburbia, if the house next door is on fire, you're screwed. Don't live in such tightly packed spaces. The next major problem are windows. If they fail, the house usually goes. They tolerate a lot, but in high wind storms, random debris can break the window, and then firebrands get in. Whoops. I would like to see some good studies on shutters, because they seem like the sort of thing that will make a very real difference on window breakage in storms, but they're not a thing anymore and probably won't come back. But look at the debris patterns when you find the news articles of the burned out neighborhoods. Almost always, you'll see intact lawns and vegetation around a burned out foundation. It's not a "wall of flame" marching through the neighborhood - it's the firebrands, blown by the wind, that you have to defend against. Unfortunately, when it comes to wildfires, when you've got things like 80 gusting 100, you're also just screwed. :/

dmckeon 5y ago

Driven by high winds into dense housing - those elements remind me of a 2017 fire that burned over 2,500 homes in Santa Rosa, California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

medntech 5y ago

Part of the medical evacuation. This is bad.

medntech 5y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/boulder/comments/rsib19/good_samaritan_hospital_staff_keeping_watch_on/ https://www.reddit.com/r/boulder/comments/rsib19/good_samari...

kleinsch 5y ago

My house probably burned, we’ll find out in the morning. Family is safe, got out in time and we have a place to stay, so blessed in that regard. We just moved from the Bay Area last year. This isn’t an area in the wilderness, it’s suburbia. This would be like if 600 homes on the edge of Fremont or San Jose burned. Freak situation where we haven’t had rain in 3 months, winds were super high, temps were high for Dec, and it sounds like power lines went down. Unreal.

JPKab 5y ago
I live just south of Superior. Let me know if you need a place to stay and I can assist. My area has just been removed from the pre-evacuation zone, since the winds have finally subsided. For anyone that doesn't live here, this was caused by Chinook winds that were stronger than usual combined with extremely dry air and vegetation. My specific location had 115 mph gusts today. When you live here you get used to the Chinooks but today was extreme. Entire house was shaking. To add color to the comment above, it is indeed an extremely suburban area. The fire started on Marshall Mesa, which is a popular mountain biking trail. Notably if you go east from Marshall Mesa you suddenly hit a shopping center with a Costco and a Target. The fire went east and directly into the shopping center along with all of the homes clustered in the neighborhoods around it. Terrible, and with very little warning. I hope your house is okay. I'm very glad your family is safe.
stevenwoo 5y ago
The last fire came within five miles of Cupertino and people I know that live near to 280/Rancho San Antonio got evacuation warnings before the wind turned.
- 01100011 5y ago
  It's only a matter of time before Los Gatos, Saratoga, Almaden, etc suffer major fire damage. CalFire defensible space recommendations are largely ignored.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago

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pengaru 5y ago

https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;@-105.2,40.0,12z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs...

dredmorbius 5y ago
Adding the caption: NASA LANCE | FIRMS Fire Map. FIRMS Fire Map allows you to interactively browse the full archive of global active fire detections from MODIS and VIIRS. Near real-time fire data are available within approximately 3 hours of satellite overpass and imagery within 4-5 hours. DO NOT USE FOR EMERGENCY PLANNING OR RESPONSE. Data are not realtime, and local authorities should be given precedence. A slightly more useful view below: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;l:noaa20-viirs,viirs,modis_a,modis_t,countries,landsat_human;@-105.1,39.9,12z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs...

jkaptur 5y ago

I evacuated from Superior today and am grateful to be safe. It’s amazing how quickly the situation developed. If you’re reading this, I’d encourage you to look around and think about what you’d take and where you’d go if you had to leave right now.

tamaharbor 5y ago

Mother Nature sucks on occasion.

trembonator 5y ago

sounds 5y ago

This really hits home for me, this is not a brushfire in a wilderness. It's moving fast, too!

fblp 5y ago

So many of the fires in California have also been started by downed electrical lines. Although this is tragic, tech to help manage fires is coming along and states can raise their standards to encourage private companies to manage risk. This has happened in Victoria, Australia: https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-an-australian-state-faced-devastation-from-gridsparked-wildfires https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-an-australian-state-faced-deva...

dredmorbius 5y ago

Boulder Colorado Emergency Operations Centre ArcGIS fire evacuation zones map: https://bouldercounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=13ab214fe2bb4da5a850df0ca0f00fc5 https://bouldercounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/inde...

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robomartin 5y ago

This is horrible. I hope everyone is OK. Homes can be rebuilt. Life is what matters. About three years ago I had to do a bunch of research on fire resistant construction for a project. I came across something that is fantastic. Part of me doesn't understand why this isn't a requirement in fire-prone areas, if not every home and building. This is the product we used, of course, there are other manufacturers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVWVP3tKlZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVWVP3tKlZc No affiliation at all other than being a customer. Yes, we conducted our own tests before making the decision. It won't resist flames forever, but it absolutely delays the maximal burn event. In addition to this, it provides a potentially significant delay of the spread from structure to structure, particularly if the gap between structures is reasonable (say, 10 ft or more). In speaking to LA County permit authorities I learned that one of the problems using advanced technology is that the bureaucracy of the system gets in the way. It's truly sad. The way the engineers put it to me translates to: If we don't have a checkbox, you can't use it. Seriously. The only way to use it is for YOU to foot the bill and pay to conduct all the tests required to add the product to the approved materials list. This process, again, due to the bureaucracy, could take years. And, BTW, much as is the case with a lot of things in the US, obtaining approval in one county does not automatically allow someone to use it outside that county. Sometimes I think the US is a bunch of independent little kingdoms, much more so than a country. In our case we could not obtain approval because the material was not on the list. We provided tons of proof, even getting the CEO's of various intumescent coating companies involved. The approvals are very weird, for example, a product might be approved for outdoor use and not approved for indoor applications. No, not because it won't work or is toxic. More often than not it is because the tests were not conducted for that particular application and you are out of luck. You might be approved to paint your walls with this stuff but are not allowed to coat your framing, rafters, etc. with it. Crazy. We ended-up working around these barriers because this was a DoD project. They simply pulled rank and that was that.

mooreds 5y ago

Belatedly, here's a stream of updates from the Boulder County Office of Emergency Management: https://www.boulderoem.com/emergency-status/ https://www.boulderoem.com/emergency-status/