
Attempt to plug a wasp nest sparked the biggest wildfire in California history - pseudolus
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mendocino-complex-cause-california-fire-20190606-story.html
======
jandrese
Steel can make sparks. I'm not sure it can be done on concrete, but the spike
may have had some rebar in the middle that would be hard enough to chip off
fragments of steel. A hot spark could then smoulder in the grass for some time
(like if the guy then decided to go for a smoke break to let the Yellowjackets
calm down) and be out of hand by the time he got back.

The story does kind of seem a bit farfetched as it goes on with the lengthy
string of failures on his part. There is a nonzero chance the guy didn't want
to cop to burning trash in his overgrown and tinder dry back yard and made up
the crazy story. There's probably no way to prove it either way.

~~~
jdietrich
Sparks are a major hazard in a lot of industries, to the extent that there is
a full range of non-sparking tools made from high-strength copper alloys.
They're most often used in the oil, gas and petrochemicals industries, but
they're also used in dry and dusty environments like grain elevators and flour
mills.

[https://www.avensafetytools.com/product-category/non-
sparkin...](https://www.avensafetytools.com/product-category/non-sparking-
tools/)

I have no idea whether this story is the whole truth, but it's perfectly
plausible - in extremely dry conditions, a tiny ember can become an
uncontrollable fire in a matter of seconds. The speed of a grass fire can be
truly frightening. Take a look at this video:

[https://youtu.be/F79tkSKstxY?t=10](https://youtu.be/F79tkSKstxY?t=10)

The fire in that video was started by the heat of an exhaust pipe, but it
could have just as easily been caused by a spark or a cigarette butt. If a
fire like this started in front of you, how sure are you that you'd be able to
extinguish it single-handedly? What if it started behind you and it got a head
start of a few seconds before you noticed it? If you were dressed in shorts
and sandals rather than fire-resistant boots and overalls, would you even
stand a chance?

A moment of hesitation or distraction is all it takes to lose control of a
grass fire. Based on the account given, I can fully imagine the desperate and
ultimately futile effort made to extinguish a fire that rapidly spread out of
control.

~~~
korethr
The video in your second link shows just how hard those grass fires can be to
contain. There's what, a half-dozen to dozen riders present? And despite their
effort, it continues to spread throughout the video.

~~~
jdietrich
Most people severely underestimate the speed of fire and overestimate the
speed at which they can respond. Even if a fire looks tiny, you have a very
narrow window of opportunity to react before the fire spreads beyond your
ability to control.

The same applies to fire in the home - if you can't put it out _right now_
with whatever comes to hand, you've probably lost your window of opportunity
to fight the fire. If your sofa or curtains catch fire, there simply isn't
time to fill a bucket or fetch a hose. If you don't have an extinguisher to
hand and can't snuff out the flames with a blanket, you need to run.

[https://youtu.be/w4W82HIzUcc?t=78](https://youtu.be/w4W82HIzUcc?t=78)

------
jguffey
I'm not a fire expert, but I do think it's short-sighted to put so much
attention on how fires _start_ , when the ultimate size and impact of a
wildfire depends so much on the environment in which the fire grows and
sustains.

To me it's a lot like blaming a web service outage on a mistake by a single
developer, when there are other questions like- how might our system have
allowed for the introduction of a bug? What measures could have been taken to
contain bugs? I feel like the software industry understands this, I wonder if
this lesson could be translated to how we talk about wildfires.

~~~
uoaei
The rub here is that you can't just make nature and urban-forest interfaces
'wildfire-safe' because that means cutting down all the vegetation, replacing
it with non-native species, or simply removing all access to the vegetated
areas.

There's really nothing to do besides clear low brush every so often... which
fire is better at than humans anyway.

~~~
kortilla
Controlled burns are a thing for a reason.

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ahupp
There's a lot of debate about the electrical utility's (PG&E) responsibility
for other fires. But I think this shows that it's really a matter of when, not
if, fires will break out. If it's not an electrical wire sparking in the wind
it will be a hammer or a tail pipe.

~~~
azinman2
But you’re forgetting that something like 80%+ of the big wildfires were
started by PG&E equipment. It’s also willful negligence in the lack of
maintenance [1]. It’s not 100%, but we can do far better.

[1]
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/18/business/pge-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/18/business/pge-
california-wildfires.html)

~~~
foobarian
What if you reform PG&E and those 80% go away. Will the next wildfire that
breaks out be 5x bigger now that dry material had more time to accumulate?
Should controlled burns be done more often to reduce the impact of inevitable
wildfires when they do happen?

~~~
uoaei
> Should controlled burns be done more often to reduce the impact of
> inevitable wildfires when they do happen?

The forest management servicepeople are starting to wake up to this, although
there is a lot of inertia in bureaucracy so reform is slow. But controlled
underbrush burns are becoming more common.

Source: father owns a house in Yosemite National Park. We have to take care of
our property by mowing/removing virtually all vegetation within 50ft of the
house, but there are also controlled burns semi-regularly in our community
performed by USFS.

~~~
bsder
> although there is a lot of inertia in bureaucracy so reform is slow.

It's also a lack of _money_. People are notorious for always questioning why
the forest service gets money.

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ducttape12
This guy must feel horrible. "What if I had just left the wasp nest and went
to lunch instead?" "What if I had called 911 earlier?" "What if I had used bug
spray instead?"

~~~
ggg2
"what if I lived in any other country, which requires a fire extinguisher in
every car?"

...and most of them aren't even a matchbox like that place.

~~~
nexuist
A quick Google search: "A fire extinguisher is mandatory in Belgium, Poland,
Turkey and Greece."

4 countries is a far cry from...all of them.

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robbrown451
Note that "An hour later, the River fire started nearby and the two eventually
merged." Which seems to indicate that if one or the other ignition events
didn't happen, we'd still have had mostly the same fire.

------
Xylakant
There’s an interesting podcast (in German) with the head of the global fire
monitoring center that talks a lot about how fires like that spread and cannot
always be contained. Some parts are specific to germany, but most are
applicable all over the world

[https://forschergeist.de/podcast/fg065-feueroekologie/](https://forschergeist.de/podcast/fg065-feueroekologie/)

------
rq1
> a dangerous mix of dry air, warm temperatures and gusty winds

I was wondering if there were similar technics to preventive avalanches to
fight fire?

~~~
Gibbon1
Backburns are one way they fight fires. Starting small fires a head of the
main front to deprive it of fuel.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/2eI6s](http://archive.is/2eI6s)

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burtonator
> On July 27 of last year, while firefighters were spread across the state
> battling fires in the north and south, a Potter Valley rancher working on a
> hot day in a bed of waist-high cured grassland drove a stake into the ground
> and created a spark that grew into the 410,000-acre Ranch fire.

Thanks to climate change you can expect more of this...

We need to start holding corporations lobbying against climate change
resolution accountable for their actions.

I say we make them pay for this damage.

~~~
tobib
> We need to start holding corporations lobbying against climate change
> resolution accountable for their actions.

Or vote for politicians that don't give in to that kind of lobbying.
Corporations can lobby all they want, it's the politicians that decide on
policy and law.

~~~
Gibbon1
Corporations have abused their power to lobby, it's well past time to take
that power away.

~~~
Joakal
Lobbying is great, you, yourself can talk to your local representative. If
lobbying is removed, then you can't legally talk to your local representative.
Which means those with a lot of money can afford to illegally 'lobby'.

The problem is why are USA politicians so easy to sway with lobbying? Is it
voters? Is it the two-party system? Is it that easy to get re-elected?

The ease of sway with lobbying is a symptom of something deeper and systemic.
IMO, I think it's the two party system (One party away from China!). If you
disagree, who's the third most popular party in USA? Europe and many other
countries have a sizable third most popular party(!).

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jockc
seems fishy af. he tries to block the hole of a yellowjack nest by driving a
stake in (??), and a fire starts (?????). uhhh

~~~
jiveturkey
that's not the 'fishy af' part. what's a bit fishy is the comedy of errors
afterwards. only slightly though. it's entirely plausible. had he also tried
unsuccessfully to urinate on the fire, then maybe i'd be doubtful.

~~~
nullc
In all of the zillion times that the same stuff happened without the
accompanying errors you never heard about it.

If you look at major aviation or industrial disasters a great many of of them
involve two or more unlikely to fail components failing at once. It's not
reasonable to look at it after the fact and say "look, a coverup! those two
systems wouldn't likely have failed at once!"

