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Tim Carter shares some things you might not know about fighting fires.
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asked the Builder and I just wanted to
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try this live feed uh it's my first time
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doing a vertical live and I wanted to
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talk a little bit
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about some things you might not know
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about the horrible wildfires and
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fighting these fires out in Los Angeles
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um it might be really helpful
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information for you when you discuss it
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with other people or you see some things
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online where people are criticizing um
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firefighters and politicians and
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whatever and I I can I I was a builder
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for 20 plus years uh firefighting has
0:39
always been a hobby of mine and the
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here's the step one that you need to
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know if you've never been out to the Los
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Angeles area and I've been out there
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many many times I have a lot of friends
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and I even family out there now it's a
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huge area it's I I can't begin to tell
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you how big it is the the the Los
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Angeles Basin uh and some of the other
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valleys like the San Fernando Valley I
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mean it's 60 70 80 Mi long it's huge all
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right it's a big area and the mountains
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there are very very steep um that that
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are you know back that are north of the
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of the
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Basin I mean you can go here onto
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YouTube if you want to see how steep
1:20
they are quite a few years ago I did a
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really kind of interesting video uh
1:25
called the history of the cob salads go
1:27
go watch that video we were actually on
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a hike
1:30
uh going up to uh uh you know uh on on
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these mountains and it was very steep
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very hard all right so I couldn't even
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imagine trying to drag a fire hose up or
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down one of those Hills
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anyway here's what you need to know
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about fighting a fire number one um if
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you live in a city like I used to live
1:50
in Cincinnati
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Ohio the let's just talk about an
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average house fire like just say a house
1:57
catches on fire could be a kitchen fire
2:00
it could be a pretty significant fire
2:02
that first alarm that comes out it's
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usually somewhere between three and five
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fire trucks and there might be three or
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four guys on each truck uh you know men
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and women all right so here you've got
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somewhere between 12 and 20 people
2:18
fighting the fire and that's all it
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really takes all right that if they know
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what they're doing and and you know
2:23
whatever they get the fire out all right
2:28
so the let's talk about the the uh eaten
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fire uh I had friends of mine who they
2:34
lost their home in the eaten fire and
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I've been to their home several times um
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it's in
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Altadena and in their subdivision they
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were up above the jet propulsion lab and
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their area uh they have 271 houses in
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the subdivision and 53 of them were on
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fire all right so 53 houses at one time
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and
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you know you might need three to five
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trucks per house so you can do the math
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all right so we're we're up we're up
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near 200 fire trucks there's not 200
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fire trucks in Altadena and not only
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that um the rest of allena was on fire
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too all right so and there's a thing
3:20
called Mutual Aid in other words as soon
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as there's a big fire like this what
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happens is all the other departments you
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know that are near altta dnf or near the
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Palisades or whatever they get called in
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all right so um but but the trouble is
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is that you've you you've got you you
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remember you need three to five trucks
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per house all right so it's unrealistic
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for anyone to think that even if you had
3:48
all the fire trucks operating out there
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that they could put out these fires
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that's not realistic the second thing
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I'm a master
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plumber I don't hear hardly any of this
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being discussed online at all I don't
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see any articles about this uh this is
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really important you need to understand
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that the the water lines the water mans
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that are buried underground that's that
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produce water and Supply water to the
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fire hydrants are the same exact water
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mains that are used to supply water to
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the homes and businesses all right and
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then a typical subdivision uh like my
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friends they might have an 8 in water
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man you know under the pavement all
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right right uh that's a pretty big pipe
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8 in pipe and you know and it might have
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a pressure in it of um I don't know
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um I see a comment I'll I'll check that
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in just a second uh sure yeah I can
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absolutely tell you about that about
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that that question I'll get to that in a
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moment
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um the um
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uh these Municipal Water
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Systems they can handle maybe one or two
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like in my buddy's subdivision 271
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houses if three understand that a
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typical fire engine can can pump 1,500
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gallons per minute all right that's a
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lot of water all right so you can't
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expect a water system to have 50 trucks
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hook up to it and and everybody get
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water even if they have the water in the
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reservoirs even if they have water and
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tanks up above my buddy's
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subdivision the system can't it can't
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Supply that much water
5:33
so you've got to keep that in mind when
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you discuss this with people when they
5:38
talk about running out of water of
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course they can run out of water
5:41
absolutely it can happen all right for a
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number of reasons but I just want you to
5:44
know that the municipal system at your
5:47
home in your city or your town if you
5:49
have a water man out in the street it
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can handle one or two or three trucks
5:53
hooking up to it maybe four uh but you
5:56
can't have 50 all right now when you get
5:59
into to the inner city the fire hydrants
6:03
and inner cities they connect to much
6:05
bigger pipes all right but that's not
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the case in all these residential
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streets all right so just I just want
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you to understand that that that don't
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don't raise your expectations about how
6:19
easy it would be to fight these fires
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all right and then now let's add to it
6:22
the wind all right so here's the uh
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here's a chat uh it says give us your
6:26
thoughts about why all homes burnt to
6:27
the dust including Granite stainless Ste
6:29
vehicle engine blocks but no trees burnt
6:32
when will they talk about the truth
6:33
going on here okay so that's a really
6:35
interesting question uh if you here's
6:38
what's going on with the
6:41
trees
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so I got photos I'm going to actually
6:45
create a new video that I'm probably
6:47
going to upload tomorrow to my ask the
6:49
Builder Channel that's going to show you
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my friend's home and the trees right
6:54
next to it and they're all charred the
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trees are gone the vegetation is gone
6:58
but the tree it's self did not burn all
7:00
right now um it's on the edge of the
7:03
fire you got to keep that in mind all
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right so understand that the trees on
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the edge of the fire the reason the
7:09
trees don't burn is because the trees
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have water in them all right and if
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you've ever tried to start a fire before
7:17
if you've ever gone to a camp out or
7:20
whatever uh you cannot um you have a big
7:23
big trouble trying to burn wet wood and
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the reason you have that trouble is for
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the wood to burn
7:30
you need to you need to boil off all of
7:33
the water in in that tree all right and
7:36
um that would happen if you threw the
7:38
tree inside the burning house or the
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burning buildings but when the trees are
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on the outskirts of the fire it's hot
7:45
there but it's not hot enough to do that
7:47
or it's not hot enough long enough to do
7:50
that so that's that's what those the
7:52
Dynamics of that burning of that wood so
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uh but you already know that wood burns
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really rapidly when it's dry because all
7:59
of the houses they're being consumed
8:02
with with that 60 70 80 m per hour wind
8:05
blowing on them it's like starting a
8:06
fire in your own yard if you've never
8:08
done this before it's really kind of an
8:09
interesting experiment I mean I I don't
8:11
want you to do it if the conditions are
8:13
dangerous but go start a campfire and if
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you have a portable electric powered
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leaf blower or gasoline powered aim the
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leaf blower at it you know because those
8:22
or stand back 10 ft and by the time the
8:24
air gets to the fire it'll probably be
8:26
50 or 60 miles per hour you'll see how
8:29
hot that Fire gets it's the same exact
8:31
effect that when you go to an old
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Blackness Forge and they have the
8:36
Bellows and when they blow air you know
8:38
they're they're pumping that Bellows and
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they're blowing air into that fire
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that's what gets that fire so flipping
8:45
hot that it can get steel on fire same
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thing go here on YouTube go watch any
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blacksmith videos where an Old
8:55
Blacksmith is using a Bellows and they
8:57
can actually get that fire inside the
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forge hot enough to melt the steel all
9:04
right so that's why that's happening
9:06
with the stainless steel the vehicle
9:08
engine blocks um you can easily do that
9:11
as long as you have the wind blowing you
9:13
need to have the wind going so that's
9:15
really kind of it that's all I really
9:17
want to share with you um there's going
9:20
to be a there's going to we're still
9:21
early in this whole process right so if
9:23
you'll notice with all of these
9:25
um any news story you know here it's
9:29
it's what it's Tuesday it's only been a
9:30
week it was just a week ago that the
9:32
fire started all right
9:35
so as we go down the timeline we're
9:38
going to get more facts and we're going
9:39
to learn more well hopefully we will
9:42
hopefully we'll be able to uncover the
9:44
truth of what really happened uh my
9:46
biggest question is it seems to me that
9:49
the fires the three major fires the
9:51
Palisades the eaten fire and I can't
9:55
remember the name of the other one but
9:56
they all seem to have started at the
9:57
same time and and I have a problem with
10:00
that I I don't think that that was a
10:02
coincidence I think that would be very
10:04
unlikely so I'm a little worried about
10:06
that so anyway um I plan to do a lot
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more of these uh streaming verticals uh
10:11
I'm glad you liked it if you uh uh want
10:14
to learn more from me go to the askthe
10:16
builder website askthe builder.com sign
10:19
up for my newsletter and um thanks for
10:22
watching and um thanks for your uh th
10:26
driver thanks so much for that question
10:27
that was a really good really really
10:29
good question but it's be those trees
10:31
didn't burn because they were they
10:34
couldn't get hot enough to boil off all
10:35
the water that's inside the tree that's
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what's going on all right thanks very
10:39
much I'm Tim Carter ask the Builder
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