Posted on 08/29/2015 1:00:40 PM PDT by BenLurkin
John Belles said he was prepared for the inevitability of a wildfire when he built his thin-shelled, concrete dome in 1999 surrounded by dry fields in Okanogan County.
Earlier this week, Belles just happened to be working 30 miles out of town when he received a voicemail from a friend warning him about a fire approaching his home, he told ABC News today.
After shuttling three vehicles off his property, Belles said he realized he had to hurry as the fire was only a couple hundred yards away.
“The fire was getting close, in fact, there was a firefighter there at the time who got trapped inside when I shut the gate inadvertently,” Belles said.
“I grabbed the hose, soaked my clothing down and doused the north side of the building as much as I could. [The fire] got close enough that it was super heated and getting uncomfortable out there in the smoke. I went inside, shut the door behind me and watched it move by.”
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Yep, built by a bu ch of Texicans.
My sister’s plan is 14 hp pump sucking from a lake.
She has a foaming option to coat things before leaving.
This is if there is some warning.
I would guess the cars were driven back after the fire.
A fire plan! On the other hand, I wonder how many homeowners in high risk places haven’t given the possible problem much thought?
A brush fire is probably not as bad as a forest fire, but the heated air would kill you all the same.
Depends on what type water fogging capabilities you employ. Moving a hose team up in full gear to a petroleum fire inside a steel structure with almost zero visibility, you depend upon your water fog escort team providing cover. Close enough and you can feel a little warmth and perceive a glow from the fire through the shield fog. Normal residential water service...can’t keep up with the steam flash rate. One of my fond memory:
I see a steel Quonset type building in the corner of the picture.It appears to have made it too.
That big green yard will help; but it depends on how wide it is, and what types of brush and forest canopy you are surrounded by.
Way back when (1967) I was in the Forest Service (CHILAO HOTSHOTS), we were told that 1 acre (that’s not very big) of class 14 brush generated the same amount of heat that the Hiroshima atomic bomb did, I believe it.
From personal experience; we were on a catline on a ridge above a canyon about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile wide waiting for our orders.
The fire topped out on the opposite ridge and sent a lot of hot stuff rolling down to the bottom of the canyon; then the opposite slope really got going, just the radiant heat forced us down the backslope of the ridge we were on for protection, remember we were about half to three quarters of a mile away.
Defensive space is great; but always have a GOOD, SAFE, ESCAPE ROUT.
Trust no one, believe nothing. If that little primitive in the back of your head is telling you to get out, it’s past time to GET OUT.
As someone who has evacuated a few times and who has no defensible space, I hear ya. I was just saying that rather than build an ugly concrete home, I would spend the money on a nice stucco home and put in a defensible space. Around here, there are homes that don’t get touched by the fires by doing just that, even as homes surrounding them get torched.
Right; and those guys are also suited up to take on a moon landing, most regular people aren’t.
Yes. Stairs. Ugh. - We built this house 30 yrs. ago with an upstairs. - Started out having my office upstairs & could run up & down the heifers several times a day. - Now, my office is downstairs & I rarely go up there. - Son is coming to visit in a few days & spend a few days here. I’m hitting the upstairs a lick & a promise. Ugh. It still means several trips up & down the stairs. - Knees are better since I’ve been taking salmon oil capsules; but still not wonderful. - Oh well. I have to keep on keeping on or else they’ll send me to the old folk’s home.
Why? Water. The Columbia River is a long ways away for most, and the envirowackos would have a fit if a lot of people tried that. Think major lawsuits brought on behalf of the wackos by the Feds - who has the money to fight the Feds in court? A bunch of right wing hayseed hicks living in the woods? Cow farmers?
Many fires are set by environmentalists to drive the people out, so they can take over. American Rivers, Nature Conservancy etc do nicely on people’s ignorance of their modus operandi and motives.
In the video at the link they say it is a Monolithic Dome. It has three layers. The outer is made of a PVC air form that you fill up with air and then you shoot the foam against. That’s why it is a ‘soft shell.’
From there you place re-bar hangers into the foam and add your re-bar against the foam. Then you shoot gunnite, a type of concrete, against the foam until you cover the re-bar. It usually is about six inches thick by the time you are finished shooting it.
Here’s the build process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwK2DU3Tj0E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP_aeAf3o3A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXFzDCb78bo
Examples of Monolithic Domes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w7KQFR8x3o
He shuttled the vehicles off the property as the fire approached.
Helped fight a small forest fire one time. I was amazed how fast a fire moved when crowning! Several people had to jump in a nearby river to escape the flames as the fire was moving faster than they could run. When we got back from our shift our pants/shirts had small holes and marks from the burning material that was being moved around by the wind.
Regarding the feds and water, you might find the material below from a related thread to be interesting.
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Do y'all remember discussions in this message board concerning how socialists are trying to unconstitutionally expand the federal government's powers by using the fed's constitutional authority to negotiate treaties (2.2.2)? Related issues concern Constitution-ignoring USA politicians working through the UN to try to force US citizens to comply with foreign laws. Examples of such laws concern gun control for civilians, parenting control and Agenda 21 issues, issues which the states have never delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, the specific power to address imo.
I had done some scratching concerning the federal government unconstitutionally expanding its powers by abusing treaty power and discovered the following. In the early 20th century, and with the help of activist justices, Congress had evidently used its power to negotiate treaties to steal 10th Amendment-protected state power to regulate water rights imo.
More specifically, although I'm happy that Native Americans were insured a supply of water for agricultural purposes, as evidenced by the Supreme Court's decision in Winters v. United States (Winters) activist justices had given Congress the green light to regulate intrastate water rights, such federal legislative powers wrongly interpolated from Congress's power to negotiate treaties imo.
It turns out that the activist justices who had decided Winters had argued that the Supremacy Clause, Section 2 of Article VII, in conjunction with Congress's power to negotiate treaties, trumped 10th Amendment-protected state power to regulate intrastate water. In fact, the justice who had argued that treaties trump the 10th Amendment, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., is one of main justices credited for fostering the idea of the "living Constitution” where activist justices basically interpret the Constitution any way that they want to.
However, regarding such a perspective on the scope of Congress's power to negotiate treaties, and as similarly noted with respect to controversial United Nations issues, please consider the following.
Thomas Jefferson, based on his experience as Vice President and President of the Senate, had officially clarified that Congress cannot use its power to negotiate treaties as a back door to establish new powers for itself, powers not based on the limited powers which the states have delegated to Congress via the Constitution.
“In giving to the President and Senate a power to make treaties, the Constitution meant only to authorize them to carry into effect, by way of treaty, any powers they might constitutionally exercise.” —Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793.
“Surely the President and Senate cannot do by treaty what the whole government is interdicted from doing in any way.” —Thomas Jefferson: Parliamentary Manual, 1812.
Also note that the Supreme Court had later reflected on Jefferson’s words, clarifying that Congress cannot use it’s power to negotiate treaties as a backdoor way to expand its constitutionally-limited powers.
"2. Insofar as Art. 2(11) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice provides for the military trial of civilian dependents accompanying the armed forces in foreign countries, it cannot be sustained as legislation which is "necessary and proper" to carry out obligations of the United States under international agreements made with those countries, since no agreement with a foreign nation can confer on Congress or any other branch of the Government power which is free from the restraints of the Constitution [emphasis added] [emphasis added].” — Reid v. Covert, 1956.
So while patriots have been concerned about "closing the barn door so the horses can't escape," stopping corrupt Congress from using its power to negotiate treaties to limit constitutional rights with the help of the UN, little did we know that one horse had already escaped from the barn in the early 20th century with respect to 10th Amendment-protected water rights, compliments of activist justices.
Regarding the EPA, note that the Founding States had made the first numbered clauses in the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, evidently a good place to hide them from Congress, to clarify that all federal legislative powers are vested in the elected members of Congress, not in the executive or judicial branches or in non-elected government bureaucrats like those running the EPA. So Congress has a constitutional monopoly on federal legislative / regulatory powers whether it wants it or not imo.
So not only has Congress wrongly delegated legislative powers to non-elected bureaucrats in blatant defiance of Sections 1-3 mentioned above, the EPA in this example, but Congress has delegated powers that the states have never granted to Congress expressly via the Constitution, regulating intrastate water rights in this example.
Also note that the post-17th Amendment Senate should have protected the states by killing the bills which led to the establishment and funding of the EPA. The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators and Constitution-ignoring EPA bureaucrats along with it.
We had a good little rain in Willow Creek early this morning. Did you get any of it?
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