straw isn't nearly as combustible as a lot of the shit people actually have in their homes. many household synthetic polymers are more combustible than wood or kindling, and some of them release combustion products that are far more toxic and can knock a person unconscious within seconds. more recently people have started adding fire retardant chemicals to plastic products during the manufacturing process, especially in building materials, but lots of random loose shit you keep in your house does not have any fire retardant added. polyurethane is especially hazardous because of the toxic gases. all sorts of substances can generate house fires hot enough to cause a flashover, but it takes time for a large enough surface to heat up to those temperatures. usually that is enough time for everyone to get out of the building. the biggest dangers are 1) people not knowing about flashovers so they assume the fire isn't dangerous to stand near since it's only about the size of a campfire at the moment; and 2) people passing out from smoke inhalation before they can escape the immediate vicinity of the fire. usually when people get stuck in a burning building it's because they are already impaired or asleep, because they tried to help someone who was, because of a physical obstruction in their egress path, or because some plastic fumes are so extremely toxic the person passed out before they could even start running. these issues were a lot worse in the 60s and 70s when building codes were far less restrictive and companies were making no effort at all to fireproof their household products. they are improving but still a very serious issue. the problem is that you can't really fireproof everything. fire retardants are, by and large, incompatible with certain types of products. for example not everybody wants to sleep in a bed made out of fire retardant. companies do make fireproof bedspreads and so on, but they aren't as popular as the flammable kinds because the chemicals impart their own properties on the product. so the average person ends up having a lot of highly combustible plastics which produce highly toxic byproducts upon combustion. polyurethane, for example, produces a deadly combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. the latter is obviously an extremely lethal poison, and the former compounds the cyanide's lethality by quickly knocking you unconscious if you breathe a dense cloud of it a couple times, which is not at all unusual. it's used to make foam and other porous, lightweight materials. unfortunately this causes the products to be extremely flammable unless heavily treated with fire retardant chemicals. the more porous a substance is, 1) the more surface area it has per unit volume, and 2) the more oxygen contained within that volume. polyurethane foam is a lot like kindling, which we make *on purpose* to quickly and easily catch fire. the reason it catches fire so easily is because of its high surface area and the fact that there's a bunch of oxygen in the spaces between the little shreds and particles of kindling. that's why hickory kindling is more flammable than a solid block of hickory. the solid block can only burn on its exterior surfaces since the oxygen can't get inside it. the kindling is permeable to oxygen, so it's permeable to flame. the entire volume is available for the fire, making it a strong fuel as far as organic solids go. obviously there are way more flammable fuels, e.g. actual fuels like kerosene or gasoline. but kindling is amazingly flammable for a solid and it's still not as flammable as polyurethane foam. for all the reasons it's useful, it's highly flammable. because it's so porous, once fire touches it, the fire can very quickly permeate the entire volume of foam, causing a rapid release of combustion products. when the solid foam turns into the gaseous smoke, it expands rapidly in a sort of pressure wave, pushing all the breathable air out of its way. this is why it creates such a dense, billowing cloud of smoke so quickly. it's not explosive, since detonation is a clearly defined threshold for a shock wave. but it expands with a far greater force than a campfire, for instance. that dense, rapidly moving cloud of smoke can quickly engulf a person and leave them no choice but to breathe in the deadly gases. the cyanide on its own might be okay since they could still escape and receive an antidote before cellular respiration actually shuts down. it isn't instantly lethal. but carbon monoxide can almost instantly cause unconsciousness. once you lose consciousness you're in huge trouble, often dead. and it doesn't need to be polyurethane to kill you this way. not every plastic produces cyanide in the same quantities, though most solid hydrocarbons produce cyanide in some amount. but cyanide poisoning is mainly something the people who manage to escape the house have to worry about. it's common in house fires but it's only a problem for people who have escaped the immediate danger of the fire itself. they can often receive treatment in time. the biggest danger is the carbon monoxide. if you pass out in a room that's on fire, it doesn't matter if you inhaled cyanide or not, the fire is gonna burn you the same either way. so any substance that produces a lot of carbon monoxide on combustion is very dangerous, and that's basically every common flammable substance lol. all of them yield carbon monoxide to some degree. but plastics yield a particularly large concentration of carbon monoxide relative to other, more inert gases. carbon dioxide is primarily toxic in the sense that every pound you breathe of it is a pound of oxygen you're not breathing. air with a higher CO2 concentration necessarily has a lower O2 concentration, meaning you can lose consciousness and die from CO2 "poisoning" as well. but it's not toxic in the same way CO is. CO has direct physiological effects of its own in addition to depriving you of oxygen. and they all contribute to knocking you the fuck out. long story short, the worst fire isn't necessarily the hottest or the most explosive or the fastest one. it's the one you can't escape from.
Polyurethane foam is far more volatile and most homes have 100's of pounds of the stuff. Don't try to be snarky about such a deadly subject. Residential fires kill many people every year and we continue to build houses without the basic fire prevention and extinguishment systems that have been around since the late 1800's. How stupid is that? The home builders associations have highjacked the legislatures to protect their precious profits. Welcome to the logic that is the US of A.
This was a training exercise, but yes, if your Christmas tree catches fire this is what happens. Note how fast that cloud of death is moving out into the hall, close your bedroom doors at night it will give you time to escape.
A lot of people have something just like that straw I’m the home from late November to January and it’s part of the reason holiday house fires are so deadly. Real Christmas trees are more dangerous than good. Artificial trees for me for life.
Yeah black smoke with nowhere to go is pretty bad. Eventually it gets so hot that the smoke layer combusts and at that point, anyone inside the room is either dead or wishing they were.
While it's true that firefighters need to be at the scene quickly, flashovers in a typical fire are pretty unlikely since in order for a flashover to happen, all combustible materials must combust at the same time. And in a typical house, many materials that are combustible are usually spread out across the room. It is still scary if it does happen and firefighters are well aware of the conditions and signs that signal an oncoming flashover
@@kky7346Bro has no idea how a flashover actually works💀 a flashover situation occurs in almost every house fire that starts from inside. If it’s in a room and has oxygen and fuel, that room is gonna flash over. Stuff being “spread out” throughout the room has zero effect on anything. It will all combust at once.
Any one working in the event industry (even just volunteers) should watch the documentary on that fire, just so they will always respect and remember to provide proper emergency exits and paths.
I was a volunteer firefighter for 20 years and I remember the intense training we were given at the Pennsylvania State Fire Academy in Lewistown Pa. The instructors were hard on us but also demanding. They were preparing us for the brutal reality of being a firefighter whether career or volunteer. The training was like this realistic and intense because they were showing us how destructive and dangerous fire is and how to survive from being seriously or critically injured. My respects to Bob McCaa and Richard Wessel and the adjunct instructors for your excellent training and being there in those years which helped me to survive!!
@@andynonymous6769 Seen it all in 20 years terrible accident scenes, dead people, etc. Was diagnosed with PTSD in 2017 because of symptoms I was having prior to being tested. I don't regret any of the time I spent as a volunteer firefighter though. Would do it all over again.
@@joshuawilliams4314 I am not sure if he meant that in a bad way, given that FF also acts as EMS in the US this is a reality. in Germany or Serbia FF does Fires and Rescues in 90% of the cases, dedicated (and usually much more widely available) EMS handle medical calls. One of the factors is for example that European cities are usually a bit more dense, and FF could not get to inner city scenes as fast as EMS. But yeah, to me FF and Coast Guard are the real badasses.
Never seen something like this before. From the start of the video 15 seconds later and the whole room was on fire... and it didn't stop there. Important lesson to learn!
There was an accelerant used my friend to get the fire hot enough fast enough. Not realistic. It is after a room has gotten hot enough, but not generally that fast before that occurs.
@@STEEPPOWdepends. It's a pretty realistic representation of what can happen if yiu take a smoking break while painting a room. Or if you have a vinyl based walls which for whatever reason was a trend in kitchens for a while. Granted those are really unlikely scenarios but there always that 1 in a mill. What's scary is the reports from back when nitrocellelose was used in wallpaper since I've personally gotten to light a 20ft long 1ft wide unrolled tube of old nitrocellulose for biochemistry purposes. 20ft laied out on concrete. Lit one end and it was like I lit cold gasoline. Just flashed across in like 5 seconds. Probably more like 10. But that stuff was no joke. Still can't comprehend how even though yes it held ink and color well people decided to line their entire house in the stuff
@@STEEPPOWstill, it's best to do everything in your power to minimise the chance of any fire. I don't even leave tiny tealight candles burning unattended. I use an electric burner for my large Yankee Candles.
That is fantastic training value. I've read some very detailed descriptions, but seeing it on video is a totally different experience. That escalated fast.
forget the fire extinguisher. it'd be too late to use one by the time you go to grab it. it took just 7 seconds for the fire to grow large enough to spread out over the ceiling
@@jackvolkwyn7590Their event is exacerbated by accelerants but in reality it happens sooner than 5-10 minutes usually. Not nearly this quick obviously but 1-2 minutes is around when it will usually occur
My house burnt down recently and thats exactly what happened. I ran like 15 feet to go grab this big jug of water and came back maybe took 10 seconds, crouched to look in the room and the fire just exploded like in this video. I dropped that shit and fell backwards didnt get hurt but some of my hair on the top of my head burnt, I picked a few random white hairs out for awhile after
It took literally seconds for the entire room to go up. This is not something that you would have time to react to. In a situation like this, the only thing that is going to save you and your family is working smoke detectors.
When my house burned down, I smelt the fire before the alarms even went off because it woke me up. Always be aware of surroundings and be ready to flee when something is wrong.
you'll notice if you look carefully that the smoke ignites but the smoke rises so its only on the top half of the room- when it comes out the door it all forces its way out making it look like the fire is filling the room so in theory you can survive if you lie down. Thats how most people survive a flashover. But also remember real house fires take long to get that big, here they are using highly flammable materials.
@@jackvolkwyn7590 that is not true. During a flashover it is not just the smoke burning. Everything in that room is burning and the temperature inside that room will exceed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. There is no way to survive a flashover without a high volume of water to rapidly cool the room. Even a firefighter will die if they get caught in a flashover.
The biggest factor was having no door on the room. If the door was closed, the fire would have pressurized the room then flashed out the exterior windows and started burning up the siding. That's a much preferable outcome (even if there's another bedroom directly upstairs) compared to having the entire 1st floor fully involved when you show up... that tends to end badly.
Kings Cross fire was a phenomenon called the trench effect, basically when fire climbs up an incline plane. Also, Kings Cross was wind driven by incoming subway trains.
My brother is a firefighter in Baltimore city, he had a call at a dwelling he did his typical search and rescue. He went through a window walk a couple feet and a flash over happen if he didn’t jump out the second story floor window he came in through he would have died. His bunker gear was burnt. His yellow helmet since he was a rookie at the time turn completely black.
No. That can lead to a build up of gases that come from the chemicals used to manufacture all the crap in your home as everything heats up and when those gases come into contact with fresh oxygen you get the dreaded backdraft explosion.
In 2011, my buddies lawnmower caught fire in his garage. It went from a candle sized flame to what we see here in the video in seconds. Obviously there was plenty to fuel the flames. Had we actually been in the garage at the time then we weren't getting out unharmed. It's terrifying how quick it can go up.
My kids are pretty responsible when playing with containers of gasoline in their straw/wooden pallet forts that they always build in the living room. 😉
That absolutely PARALYZED me with FEAR I hoping never ever get caught in A house fire... where there accelerants used in that room other than the initial fire being started?
That pile of junk in the corner was set up as an “accelerant” of sorts. It was making flames all the way to the ceiling 7 seconds in, and it covered the ceiling in flames after 15 seconds, when nothing else in the room had even started burning. Even the most flammable furniture, curtains etc don’t light that fast. The only household items that might come close would be a dried out Christmas tree or a gas can that bursted..
A flashover fire is the near-simultaneous ignition of most of the directly exposed combustible material in an enclosed area. When certain organic materials are heated, they undergo thermal decomposition and release flammable gases. Flashover normally occurs when the upper portion of a compartment reaches a temperature of approximately 600C/1100F, for ordinary combustibles. There's a rapid transition from local burning of contents within a compartment to widespread burning of ALL exposed materials. Flashover can lead to rapid fire progression, and is one of the leading causes of firefighter deaths in the US.
You are correct. As everything heats up the chemicals that are stored within furniture and the paint on the walls and all those plastic products are slowly released in a gaseous state feeding those flames until they encounter enough oxygen which leads to the deadly backdraft explosion. I miss being a firefighter.
No it was a training burn. We use pallets that are treated with fuel and have straw placed in them prior to them being lit. We are no longer allowed to throw fuel on any fire for training like in the old days. Things are done much more safe now.
jeesus, I immediately went down to the comments to get a feel for peoples consensus and in the corner of my eye the fire had already left the room. Scary stuff!
Glad i bought interlinked smoke detectors. Wish the family wasn't more concerned about being annoyed when they all go off instead of being alerted to a fire as early as possible. Think I'll share this video so they can see how important an early alert is.
Thank you for sharing and yes unfortunately accidental activations cause people to not take them serious overtime. Thanks for practicing good fire safety in having working smoke detectors!
Can anyone tell me why this flashover happened so quickly? Usually it takes about 2 minutes for a room of that size to experience flashover. That flashed over in a couple seconds
It was a tape deck playing my mixtape! Nah but seriously, flashovers happen because smoke in the air is unburned fuel, combined with just the right temperature and oxygen, causes the very air to ignite and the entire room to be engulfed in flames in a matter of seconds.
I carried out a project on my cousins house at her request- she wanted her entire hall and stairs ceiling covered in those beautiful panels of fake leaves and flowers with added lights that you tend to see in bars and restaurants etc. She assured me she would get a new fire alarm fitted as soon as I finished. She did not. As far as I know to this day she still has no fire alarm in her home, which is actually illegal in this country. If she ever has a house fire then nobody is making it out that building alive- they'll be coated in molten plastic from that ceiling installation I carried out. We don't speak anymore (for other reasons) but I still feel so guilty to have installed all the panels and lighting for believing her promise that she would get a fire alarm. I don't know why she won't get them- in this country, you literally get them installed directly to your electric mains at no cost!
Was that really a real flashover? For me, a flashover is, if some bad burning things like furniture or carpets make a lot of smoke, and if the temperature rises, the smoke starts to burn. Here i saw some very well burning stuff like straw and maybe gasoline, that ignited very well from the beginning to simolate a flashover.
Yeah this is a flashover. A flashover occurs when the whole room gets so hot that everything pyrolyzes and starts burning, even in parts of the room the flames or smoke haven't reached. For example if the fire starts in one corner and a sofa in the other corner starts burning without getting hit by embers/flame.
is that "all"? It's absolutely terrifying but from what I heard the real bad part is when the temperature rises so high that even the dark smoke takes fire. At that point a small explosion happens and the air takes fire itself. Crazy!
This is why you CRAWL out of a burning house. Do not run or walk. You can see how all of the combustion is taking place via gas exchange in the top half of the rooms and hallways - crawling with your mouth near the floor, there's surely still breathable air, at head level you'd have been dead as a doornail with your first breath.
Yes it is very important to stay low. A simple bedroom door can also serve as a very good barrier from the fire if you can close it and get to a window with fresh air.
Yes it is very important to stay low. A simple bedroom door can also serve as a very good barrier from the fire if you can close it and get to a window with fresh air.
This “flashover” would have happened just as fast in a sheet metal building with a concrete floor. Whatever stuff they had in the corner was enough to fill the room with flames, before anything else had even started burning.
Former volunteer FF (only shot while due to relocation, so don't come at me with praise, I barely did anything after training, sadly). This video is a great display of how insanely fast fire spreads, and an actual flashover can be 1000x faster, as it can instantly ignite all the air in the room once temperatures and oxygen levels hit the "sweet spot". If you live in an apartment and a fire breaks out, get out AND CLOSE THE DOOR. Many people have died because someone left the apartment door open, and smoke filled a 10 story building in less than a minute from top to bottom. As a bit of a paranoid person myself, living on the 4th floor of a 70s "commie block", I have a climbing rope, harness, and anchor point in my small office, so we would have a safe way out in case of an emergency (wife and I also went abseiling a few times, to get accustomed to the gear and quick, controlled descents. Stay safe out there people.
"Shit there's a tiny little fire... Let me run to the kitchen real quick and fill a bucket with water, then I can put it out, will take me like 20 seconds tops, it's not going to get out of hand in 20 seconds...."
no they aren't. while this is a training fire and some fuel is added inside the pallets before starting the fire we dont add anything to the walls or any other objects in the room.
This is really not a flashover. It’s more of just a free burning fire. In a flashover heat, smoke and particles build up near the ceiling and spontaneously combust all at once. Similar to a backdraft but not as violent. Been through more than one of each.
Yeah it was a house that was donated to them to train on. It's common with people that are looking to tear down a house to build a new one, you can let firefighters burn it for training purposes and it helps save on demolition costs so it's a win/win for everyone
Had that door been shut and that had happened, then somone opened the door it would have caused a huge vacuum of air inward as the fire inhaled it. Then it would have exploded outward ingulfing everything. The very walls and ceiling it's burning helps with its insulation to keep its temperature max. Very dangerous. I've been in a burning house and to watch fire move is very intimidating. It's a living breathing thing with a mind of its own.
It's shocking that such an explosive growth of fire can happen naturally like that without any accelerants or foreign combustible gasses. The closest thing I've seen before I can compare it to is a powder fire, whether it's lycopodium pyrotechnics or an accidental ignition at a colored-powder festival. So scary 😬
Let this be an important lesson: all that dry loosely stacked straw you keep in your living room is a timebomb waiting to go off!
No but Christmas trees and couches are!
straw isn't nearly as combustible as a lot of the shit people actually have in their homes. many household synthetic polymers are more combustible than wood or kindling, and some of them release combustion products that are far more toxic and can knock a person unconscious within seconds. more recently people have started adding fire retardant chemicals to plastic products during the manufacturing process, especially in building materials, but lots of random loose shit you keep in your house does not have any fire retardant added. polyurethane is especially hazardous because of the toxic gases. all sorts of substances can generate house fires hot enough to cause a flashover, but it takes time for a large enough surface to heat up to those temperatures. usually that is enough time for everyone to get out of the building. the biggest dangers are 1) people not knowing about flashovers so they assume the fire isn't dangerous to stand near since it's only about the size of a campfire at the moment; and 2) people passing out from smoke inhalation before they can escape the immediate vicinity of the fire. usually when people get stuck in a burning building it's because they are already impaired or asleep, because they tried to help someone who was, because of a physical obstruction in their egress path, or because some plastic fumes are so extremely toxic the person passed out before they could even start running.
these issues were a lot worse in the 60s and 70s when building codes were far less restrictive and companies were making no effort at all to fireproof their household products. they are improving but still a very serious issue. the problem is that you can't really fireproof everything. fire retardants are, by and large, incompatible with certain types of products. for example not everybody wants to sleep in a bed made out of fire retardant. companies do make fireproof bedspreads and so on, but they aren't as popular as the flammable kinds because the chemicals impart their own properties on the product. so the average person ends up having a lot of highly combustible plastics which produce highly toxic byproducts upon combustion.
polyurethane, for example, produces a deadly combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. the latter is obviously an extremely lethal poison, and the former compounds the cyanide's lethality by quickly knocking you unconscious if you breathe a dense cloud of it a couple times, which is not at all unusual. it's used to make foam and other porous, lightweight materials. unfortunately this causes the products to be extremely flammable unless heavily treated with fire retardant chemicals. the more porous a substance is, 1) the more surface area it has per unit volume, and 2) the more oxygen contained within that volume.
polyurethane foam is a lot like kindling, which we make *on purpose* to quickly and easily catch fire. the reason it catches fire so easily is because of its high surface area and the fact that there's a bunch of oxygen in the spaces between the little shreds and particles of kindling. that's why hickory kindling is more flammable than a solid block of hickory. the solid block can only burn on its exterior surfaces since the oxygen can't get inside it. the kindling is permeable to oxygen, so it's permeable to flame. the entire volume is available for the fire, making it a strong fuel as far as organic solids go. obviously there are way more flammable fuels, e.g. actual fuels like kerosene or gasoline. but kindling is amazingly flammable for a solid and it's still not as flammable as polyurethane foam. for all the reasons it's useful, it's highly flammable. because it's so porous, once fire touches it, the fire can very quickly permeate the entire volume of foam, causing a rapid release of combustion products. when the solid foam turns into the gaseous smoke, it expands rapidly in a sort of pressure wave, pushing all the breathable air out of its way. this is why it creates such a dense, billowing cloud of smoke so quickly. it's not explosive, since detonation is a clearly defined threshold for a shock wave. but it expands with a far greater force than a campfire, for instance.
that dense, rapidly moving cloud of smoke can quickly engulf a person and leave them no choice but to breathe in the deadly gases. the cyanide on its own might be okay since they could still escape and receive an antidote before cellular respiration actually shuts down. it isn't instantly lethal. but carbon monoxide can almost instantly cause unconsciousness. once you lose consciousness you're in huge trouble, often dead. and it doesn't need to be polyurethane to kill you this way. not every plastic produces cyanide in the same quantities, though most solid hydrocarbons produce cyanide in some amount. but cyanide poisoning is mainly something the people who manage to escape the house have to worry about. it's common in house fires but it's only a problem for people who have escaped the immediate danger of the fire itself. they can often receive treatment in time. the biggest danger is the carbon monoxide. if you pass out in a room that's on fire, it doesn't matter if you inhaled cyanide or not, the fire is gonna burn you the same either way. so any substance that produces a lot of carbon monoxide on combustion is very dangerous, and that's basically every common flammable substance lol. all of them yield carbon monoxide to some degree. but plastics yield a particularly large concentration of carbon monoxide relative to other, more inert gases. carbon dioxide is primarily toxic in the sense that every pound you breathe of it is a pound of oxygen you're not breathing. air with a higher CO2 concentration necessarily has a lower O2 concentration, meaning you can lose consciousness and die from CO2 "poisoning" as well. but it's not toxic in the same way CO is. CO has direct physiological effects of its own in addition to depriving you of oxygen. and they all contribute to knocking you the fuck out.
long story short, the worst fire isn't necessarily the hottest or the most explosive or the fastest one. it's the one you can't escape from.
Polyurethane foam is far more volatile and most homes have 100's of pounds of the stuff. Don't try to be snarky about such a deadly subject. Residential fires kill many people every year and we continue to build houses without the basic fire prevention and extinguishment systems that have been around since the late 1800's. How stupid is that? The home builders associations have highjacked the legislatures to protect their precious profits. Welcome to the logic that is the US of A.
This was a training exercise, but yes, if your Christmas tree catches fire this is what happens.
Note how fast that cloud of death is moving out into the hall, close your bedroom doors at night it will give you time to escape.
A lot of people have something just like that straw I’m the home from late November to January and it’s part of the reason holiday house fires are so deadly. Real Christmas trees are more dangerous than good. Artificial trees for me for life.
and to think that this is the last thing many people have seen before dying. Its intimidating.
greetings from hell
Kinda beautiful too
@@andynonymous6769 like lightning storms. Unreal.
A couple of pallets being set fire to by a fireman, and then my whole house burning around me? Only if I had dirt on the Clinton’s..
Absolutely terrifying! It's no wonder firefighters are trained in how to look out for and prevent this.
Got a degree in fire science and went to the academy. I’d beg the differ
Yeah black smoke with nowhere to go is pretty bad. Eventually it gets so hot that the smoke layer combusts and at that point, anyone inside the room is either dead or wishing they were.
That was a lot faster than I ever thought. No wonders the fire department needs to be at a fire quickly.
While it's true that firefighters need to be at the scene quickly, flashovers in a typical fire are pretty unlikely since in order for a flashover to happen, all combustible materials must combust at the same time. And in a typical house, many materials that are combustible are usually spread out across the room. It is still scary if it does happen and firefighters are well aware of the conditions and signs that signal an oncoming flashover
@@kky7346, that and there's a lot of measures in place to slow a flashover like sprinklers
Fires double in size every two minutes, which is the real reason they need to be there ASAP.
@@kky7346Bro has no idea how a flashover actually works💀 a flashover situation occurs in almost every house fire that starts from inside. If it’s in a room and has oxygen and fuel, that room is gonna flash over. Stuff being “spread out” throughout the room has zero effect on anything. It will all combust at once.
Fire deserves the utmost respect. If you haven’t seen it already, the footage from the Station Nightclub fire in 2003 will change you.
the warwick station bar fire. i'll never forget that. not one ounce of blood is seen but that video is burned (pun intended) into my memory for life.
Any one working in the event industry (even just volunteers) should watch the documentary on that fire, just so they will always respect and remember to provide proper emergency exits and paths.
I was a volunteer firefighter for 20 years and I remember the intense training we were given at the Pennsylvania State Fire Academy in Lewistown Pa. The instructors were hard on us but also demanding. They were preparing us for the brutal reality of being a firefighter whether career or volunteer. The training was like this realistic and intense because they were showing us how destructive and dangerous fire is and how to survive from being seriously or critically injured. My respects to Bob McCaa and Richard Wessel and the adjunct instructors for your excellent training and being there in those years which helped me to survive!!
The brutal reality of... lift assists and getting dispatched to 10 million wellness checks on passed out drunk people
@@andynonymous6769 Seen it all in 20 years terrible accident scenes, dead people, etc. Was diagnosed with PTSD in 2017 because of symptoms I was having prior to being tested. I don't regret any of the time I spent as a volunteer firefighter though. Would do it all over again.
@@geraldwilson681Sorry that guys being weird, thank you for everything you’ve done
Firefighters are the real selfless heroes
@@andynonymous6769like u could do half of what they do shut up and have some respect
@@joshuawilliams4314 I am not sure if he meant that in a bad way, given that FF also acts as EMS in the US this is a reality. in Germany or Serbia FF does Fires and Rescues in 90% of the cases, dedicated (and usually much more widely available) EMS handle medical calls. One of the factors is for example that European cities are usually a bit more dense, and FF could not get to inner city scenes as fast as EMS. But yeah, to me FF and Coast Guard are the real badasses.
0:21 It looks like a living thing, reaching out at you from that doorway, trying to drag you back in. Absolutely terrifying
Because it is
so scawy
@@deletdis6173 It's a chemical reaction, nothing more, nothing less. lol
@@ChrissonatorOFL No, it's magical demons being summoned by oxygen and heat
@@ChrissonatorOFL so are you and me and everything alive :)
Never seen something like this before. From the start of the video 15 seconds later and the whole room was on fire... and it didn't stop there. Important lesson to learn!
There was an accelerant used my friend to get the fire hot enough fast enough. Not realistic. It is after a room has gotten hot enough, but not generally that fast before that occurs.
@@STEEPPOWdepends. It's a pretty realistic representation of what can happen if yiu take a smoking break while painting a room. Or if you have a vinyl based walls which for whatever reason was a trend in kitchens for a while.
Granted those are really unlikely scenarios but there always that 1 in a mill.
What's scary is the reports from back when nitrocellelose was used in wallpaper since I've personally gotten to light a 20ft long 1ft wide unrolled tube of old nitrocellulose for biochemistry purposes. 20ft laied out on concrete. Lit one end and it was like I lit cold gasoline. Just flashed across in like 5 seconds. Probably more like 10. But that stuff was no joke. Still can't comprehend how even though yes it held ink and color well people decided to line their entire house in the stuff
@@STEEPPOWstill, it's best to do everything in your power to minimise the chance of any fire. I don't even leave tiny tealight candles burning unattended. I use an electric burner for my large Yankee Candles.
That is fantastic training value. I've read some very detailed descriptions, but seeing it on video is a totally different experience. That escalated fast.
That went from "on thats just a small fire in the corner go get some water" to "I just witnessed a gateway to hell open up in my bedroom"
forget the fire extinguisher. it'd be too late to use one by the time you go to grab it. it took just 7 seconds for the fire to grow large enough to spread out over the ceiling
call 911 and gtfo!
@@sheeniebeanie2597 yep!
no in a real event of a fire it would take 5-10 minutes for the smoke to build up that much, they are just using highly flammable material here
@@jackvolkwyn7590Their event is exacerbated by accelerants but in reality it happens sooner than 5-10 minutes usually. Not nearly this quick obviously but 1-2 minutes is around when it will usually occur
My house burnt down recently and thats exactly what happened. I ran like 15 feet to go grab this big jug of water and came back maybe took 10 seconds, crouched to look in the room and the fire just exploded like in this video. I dropped that shit and fell backwards didnt get hurt but some of my hair on the top of my head burnt, I picked a few random white hairs out for awhile after
It took literally seconds for the entire room to go up. This is not something that you would have time to react to. In a situation like this, the only thing that is going to save you and your family is working smoke detectors.
When my house burned down, I smelt the fire before the alarms even went off because it woke me up. Always be aware of surroundings and be ready to flee when something is wrong.
@@grylltheonion First off, I'm glad you're alright and hope you were able to manage things after. Also, I'm curious as to how it started?
you'll notice if you look carefully that the smoke ignites but the smoke rises so its only on the top half of the room- when it comes out the door it all forces its way out making it look like the fire is filling the room so in theory you can survive if you lie down. Thats how most people survive a flashover. But also remember real house fires take long to get that big, here they are using highly flammable materials.
@@jackvolkwyn7590 that is not true. During a flashover it is not just the smoke burning. Everything in that room is burning and the temperature inside that room will exceed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. There is no way to survive a flashover without a high volume of water to rapidly cool the room. Even a firefighter will die if they get caught in a flashover.
The biggest factor was having no door on the room. If the door was closed, the fire would have pressurized the room then flashed out the exterior windows and started burning up the siding. That's a much preferable outcome (even if there's another bedroom directly upstairs) compared to having the entire 1st floor fully involved when you show up... that tends to end badly.
Boy, that escalated quickly!
H O L Y... S H I T... was not expecting something THAT dramatic.
superb camera work managed to capture the 7.8 earthquake happening at the same time. disaster of epic proportions.
King's Cross 1987. It must've looked like this, only ten times larger!
DisasterOnline yes it travelled up the escalator causing a huge flash over in the ticket hall, where most people burned to death. Really sad...
Kings Cross fire was a phenomenon called the trench effect, basically when fire climbs up an incline plane. Also, Kings Cross was wind driven by incoming subway trains.
excellent display of just how fast a fire grows
My brother is a firefighter in Baltimore city, he had a call at a dwelling he did his typical search and rescue. He went through a window walk a couple feet and a flash over happen if he didn’t jump out the second story floor window he came in through he would have died. His bunker gear was burnt. His yellow helmet since he was a rookie at the time turn completely black.
Flashovers can happen insanely quickly.
The Station fire brought me here :(
That escalated quickly
Jesus the fire literally starts chasing after them!
Mary Winchester! Get down from that ceiling this Instant!
Basically the house turns into a large rocket stove
Fire always seams slow at first, then the next second it’s all over the place.
that is terrifying, I have never seen a fire spread that quicklu
Thats why you close doors in case of a fire.
No. That can lead to a build up of gases that come from the chemicals used to manufacture all the crap in your home as everything heats up and when those gases come into contact with fresh oxygen you get the dreaded backdraft explosion.
In 2011, my buddies lawnmower caught fire in his garage. It went from a candle sized flame to what we see here in the video in seconds. Obviously there was plenty to fuel the flames. Had we actually been in the garage at the time then we weren't getting out unharmed. It's terrifying how quick it can go up.
It goes from "I think I can handle this with a fire extinguisher" to "OH GOD NO" in mere seconds
dude this videos FIRE
You know, when people say fire can spread really fast, my brain tends not to contemplate the implications of it.
Yes once it gets going and has plenty of oxygen watch out!
Dude I didn’t realize rooms could turn into furnaces so quick, very educational!
Thanks for watching. yes this room had 2 open doors so the fire grew very fast!
This is an important lesson as that room was empty apart from that pallet stack, until the straw and the floorboards caught fire.
Think of this in the context of The Station Fire. Highly flammable acoustic foam covering all the walls and ceilings.
*Basic chemistry:*
A combustion reaction without enough oxygen (O2) and heat (T
over complicated it- smoke is just unburnt flammable material that will ignite if the area is not well ventilated
Bro it's literally chasing them out of the room. That is intense how fast it moves
Wow! It went from "Oh no, get the fire extinguisher" to "OH NO, EVERYONE GET OUT!" in 20 seconds.
Great footage, especially when it pushes them back into the the hall way. Always learn when you can! 🤓
Thank you! I appreciate the support!
This just shows, once the fire touches the ceiling, it is game over
People make sure when storing open cans of gasoline inside a wood pallet fort with straw flooring to practice fire safety.
My kids are pretty responsible when playing with containers of gasoline in their straw/wooden pallet forts that they always build in the living room. 😉
That absolutely PARALYZED me with FEAR I hoping never ever get caught in A house fire... where there accelerants used in that room other than the initial fire being started?
That pile of junk in the corner was set up as an “accelerant” of sorts.
It was making flames all the way to the ceiling 7 seconds in, and it covered the ceiling in flames after 15 seconds, when nothing else in the room had even started burning.
Even the most flammable furniture, curtains etc don’t light that fast.
The only household items that might come close would be a dried out Christmas tree or a gas can that bursted..
Less than 20 seconds and the room is covered. Imagine being in this room sleeping while this happens... you're probably screwed!
A flashover fire is the near-simultaneous ignition of most of the directly exposed combustible material in an enclosed area. When certain organic materials are heated, they undergo thermal decomposition and release flammable gases.
Flashover normally occurs when the upper portion of a compartment reaches a temperature of approximately 600C/1100F, for ordinary combustibles. There's a rapid transition from local burning of contents within a compartment to widespread burning of ALL exposed materials.
Flashover can lead to rapid fire progression, and is one of the leading causes of firefighter deaths in the US.
You are correct. As everything heats up the chemicals that are stored within furniture and the paint on the walls and all those plastic products are slowly released in a gaseous state feeding those flames until they encounter enough oxygen which leads to the deadly backdraft explosion. I miss being a firefighter.
Was there some sort of accelerant on those pallets, or did they just naturally go up that fast?
No it was a training burn. We use pallets that are treated with fuel and have straw placed in them prior to them being lit. We are no longer allowed to throw fuel on any fire for training like in the old days. Things are done much more safe now.
Fire Hobbyist That explains it: I didn't think that plain pallets could go up that fast. Now it makes sense.
dry straw and wooden pallets like those you saw here don't need an accelerant they can just go up like that naturally
Still waiting for the flashover.....
jeesus, I immediately went down to the comments to get a feel for peoples consensus and in the corner of my eye the fire had already left the room. Scary stuff!
Family of 4: Time to open the gifts!
The live christmas tree at the corner of the room: 🔥 🔥 🔥
Glad i bought interlinked smoke detectors. Wish the family wasn't more concerned about being annoyed when they all go off instead of being alerted to a fire as early as possible. Think I'll share this video so they can see how important an early alert is.
Thank you for sharing and yes unfortunately accidental activations cause people to not take them serious overtime. Thanks for practicing good fire safety in having working smoke detectors!
Can anyone tell me why this flashover happened so quickly? Usually it takes about 2 minutes for a room of that size to experience flashover. That flashed over in a couple seconds
It was accelerated due to it being a training burn. Plenty of fuel and ventilation cause they flashover to occur at a more rapid rate.
It was a tape deck playing my mixtape!
Nah but seriously, flashovers happen because smoke in the air is unburned fuel, combined with just the right temperature and oxygen, causes the very air to ignite and the entire room to be engulfed in flames in a matter of seconds.
Soandnb correct. Plenty of heat and oxygen. But if you look at the room there is nearly no fuel to reach flashpoint
Room was filled with hay. It burns quickly
@@Soandnb The key to a flashover is besides the heat, it's the carbon monoxide trapping that causes the intensity as you see.
I fucking loved that job I will go back one day :P
I carried out a project on my cousins house at her request- she wanted her entire hall and stairs ceiling covered in those beautiful panels of fake leaves and flowers with added lights that you tend to see in bars and restaurants etc. She assured me she would get a new fire alarm fitted as soon as I finished. She did not. As far as I know to this day she still has no fire alarm in her home, which is actually illegal in this country. If she ever has a house fire then nobody is making it out that building alive- they'll be coated in molten plastic from that ceiling installation I carried out. We don't speak anymore (for other reasons) but I still feel so guilty to have installed all the panels and lighting for believing her promise that she would get a fire alarm. I don't know why she won't get them- in this country, you literally get them installed directly to your electric mains at no cost!
I’m high as hell because the shape of that fire looks like a demon crawling on the ceiling towards the camera and it’s trippy asf
Cutting it pretty close there.
What it feels like to be in my garage in the middle of July...😂
Was that really a real flashover? For me, a flashover is, if some bad burning things like furniture or carpets make a lot of smoke, and if the temperature rises, the smoke starts to burn. Here i saw some very well burning stuff like straw and maybe gasoline, that ignited very well from the beginning to simolate a flashover.
Yeah this is a flashover. A flashover occurs when the whole room gets so hot that everything pyrolyzes and starts burning, even in parts of the room the flames or smoke haven't reached. For example if the fire starts in one corner and a sofa in the other corner starts burning without getting hit by embers/flame.
39 sec. This is very impressive.
That smoke looks so scary!
This is clearly a thread full of non-firefighters
Holy shit.
I just listened to the Charleston Sofa Store story and wanted to get an idea of what a flashover was.
Holy shit
That's why they tell you to get down and crawl! Now I understand. I knew that smoke rises buy this I've never seen before.
Crazy how the dude was standing in the doorway at 0:15 and it was completely engulfed like seven seconds later.
"ITS GONNA FLASH ON US BULL, WE GOTTA BACK OUT!"
is that "all"?
It's absolutely terrifying but from what I heard the real bad part is when the temperature rises so high that even the dark smoke takes fire. At that point a small explosion happens and the air takes fire itself. Crazy!
This is why you CRAWL out of a burning house. Do not run or walk. You can see how all of the combustion is taking place via gas exchange in the top half of the rooms and hallways - crawling with your mouth near the floor, there's surely still breathable air, at head level you'd have been dead as a doornail with your first breath.
Yes it is very important to stay low. A simple bedroom door can also serve as a very good barrier from the fire if you can close it and get to a window with fresh air.
brilliant
bruh i thought i could escape a house fire... i no longer think that
Wow, that only took seconds!
That is why you crawl during a fire. Look where all the smoke was.
Yes it is very important to stay low. A simple bedroom door can also serve as a very good barrier from the fire if you can close it and get to a window with fresh air.
That'll take care of dem bed bugs! :P
The moment the whole cardboard box hits critical temperature
its absolutely incredible the how fast american homes burn
Be cool about fire safety.
This “flashover” would have happened just as fast in a sheet metal building with a concrete floor.
Whatever stuff they had in the corner was enough to fill the room with flames, before anything else had even started burning.
May the 911 victims who had to witness such thing rest in peace 😔
Makes you realize that the people at places like The Station and the Beverly Hills Supper Club really had very little time to react…
Where’s the flash?
This is why you should also Close before you dose (ooor on every occasion close any door in your house.)
well, I have acquired a new fear
Damn that’s fast
ive been in a house fire shit happened fast i keep an extinguisher now
No flash over
Imma head out
Ahh I hate those fisheye camera lenses that distort the objects being recorded.
not to mention the epileptic cameradork
That whole room got that hot, that fast, was an accelerant used? Wonder what the v patterns look like.
nope- smoke is unburnt material that will inevitably end up igniting
Former volunteer FF (only shot while due to relocation, so don't come at me with praise, I barely did anything after training, sadly). This video is a great display of how insanely fast fire spreads, and an actual flashover can be 1000x faster, as it can instantly ignite all the air in the room once temperatures and oxygen levels hit the "sweet spot". If you live in an apartment and a fire breaks out, get out AND CLOSE THE DOOR. Many people have died because someone left the apartment door open, and smoke filled a 10 story building in less than a minute from top to bottom. As a bit of a paranoid person myself, living on the 4th floor of a 70s "commie block", I have a climbing rope, harness, and anchor point in my small office, so we would have a safe way out in case of an emergency (wife and I also went abseiling a few times, to get accustomed to the gear and quick, controlled descents. Stay safe out there people.
Accurate reinactment of a Christmas tree fire
Hey, great video! Mind if I show this for a fire academy course?
30 seconds from little fire to burning the house, no wonder you musn't take your stuff when leaving during a fire alarm
What accelerant did they use (if any)? That really escalated quickly!
This was at a training burn so some accelerant was used to speed up the growth but. Once it starts to go it moves fast though.
Can i use this in my short film? Just the first 20 sec.?
I uploaded with the intent of people using it for training purposes so by all means have at it! Thanks for watching and visiting my channel.
"Shit there's a tiny little fire... Let me run to the kitchen real quick and fill a bucket with water, then I can put it out, will take me like 20 seconds tops, it's not going to get out of hand in 20 seconds...."
That got intense super quick. Wtf was that?
Are the walls soaked in gasoline!??
no they aren't. while this is a training fire and some fuel is added inside the pallets before starting the fire we dont add anything to the walls or any other objects in the room.
This is really not a flashover. It’s more of just a free burning fire. In a flashover heat, smoke and particles build up near the ceiling and spontaneously combust all at once. Similar to a backdraft but not as violent. Been through more than one of each.
Is this a training situation? Just curious
Yeah it was a house that was donated to them to train on. It's common with people that are looking to tear down a house to build a new one, you can let firefighters burn it for training purposes and it helps save on demolition costs so it's a win/win for everyone
@@ZackThreet Thanks man
Had that door been shut and that had happened, then somone opened the door it would have caused a huge vacuum of air inward as the fire inhaled it. Then it would have exploded outward ingulfing everything. The very walls and ceiling it's burning helps with its insulation to keep its temperature max. Very dangerous. I've been in a burning house and to watch fire move is very intimidating. It's a living breathing thing with a mind of its own.
yes also known as a backdraft
As expected, the room is fully involved in seconds.
Involved in the fire? Yes.
Engulfed? Definitely.
It's shocking that such an explosive growth of fire can happen naturally like that without any accelerants or foreign combustible gasses. The closest thing I've seen before I can compare it to is a powder fire, whether it's lycopodium pyrotechnics or an accidental ignition at a colored-powder festival. So scary 😬
Holy eff, the powders in those idiotic "dyed-looking-baking-flour foodfight" festivals are _flammable!?_
@@Vindsvelleyes, highly
Vent point ignition.
Ah...I can smell the carcinogens from here.