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How Wildfires Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
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Speaker 1: right over there, and this is stuff you should not
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Speaker 1: That was my Shatner. I told you I worked with him,
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Speaker 1: I think on a podcast. Right. He was puffy and
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Speaker 1: stuff in a suit. He's nice though, right, he was
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Speaker 1: super nice. And heck I uh, every time I'm wearing
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Speaker 1: wear a suit, I'm puffy and stuff in a suit.
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Speaker 1: So I'm poured into my suits, poured in liquid. That's great. So,
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Speaker 1: and that's absolutely not true, by the way, Chuck. Yes, Um,
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Speaker 1: I have a couple of stories for you. I have
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Speaker 1: a specific story for you. But you have this too, right,
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Speaker 1: did I give you this? Okay? So? Um? In uh
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Speaker 1: two thousand two right, there is a guy who worked
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Speaker 1: for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and he was a
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Speaker 1: firefighter for them. Right, he went onto the Arizona Apache
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Speaker 1: Reservation and he started a wildfire intentionally. So he's an arsonist. Yes,
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Speaker 1: he's not an arsonist for fun or because he's crazy,
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Speaker 1: Um or what was it? Uh? He was curious, highly curious.
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Speaker 1: Remember that was a trade, that was trade curiosity setting fires. Um.
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Speaker 1: He wanted to work, right, Leonard greg Leonard greg was
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Speaker 1: his name. Um, he uh set this fire and unbeknownst
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Speaker 1: to him, at the same time you do. There's a woman,
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Speaker 1: um who had run out of gas not too far away, right, um,
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Speaker 1: and she saw that there was a news helicopter covering
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Speaker 1: the fire that Leonard greg had just said. She didn't
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Speaker 1: know about either, but she didn't feel like walking, or
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Speaker 1: she felt like she couldn't walk, so she set a
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Speaker 1: fire to try to get the attention of the news
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Speaker 1: helicopter so it would come rescue her so she didn't
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Speaker 1: have to walk to go get gas. That's pretty amazingly awful. So, UM,
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Speaker 1: I guess her last name was chet is Key. Because
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Speaker 1: the Rodeo Fire, which is what they called the fire
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Speaker 1: that Leonard Gregg started, collided with the Chetisky fire, and um,
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Speaker 1: it was a conflagration. Ultimately four hundred and sixty seven
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Speaker 1: thousand acres burned, including four and it was the largest
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Speaker 1: fire in Arizona's history. And this is two thou So Greg,
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Speaker 1: I don't know what happened to the woman, but Greg
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Speaker 1: was found guilty of arson since the ten years in
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Speaker 1: order to pay twenty eight million dollars, which as an
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Speaker 1: occasional firefighter for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I would
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Speaker 1: imagine he didn't have. Yeah, when that never happens. You
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Speaker 1: always see that, like their awards so and so this,
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Speaker 1: and they just don't pay. It's just like a symbolic award.
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Speaker 1: I guess you'll know you'll never make more than your
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Speaker 1: wages again kind of thing. Yeah, but what's crazy is
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Speaker 1: not just that this lady set this fire because she
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Speaker 1: wanted to get the attention of a news copter, or
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Speaker 1: that this guy set a fire because of a desire
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Speaker 1: to get work to put the fire out, but because
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Speaker 1: they're not the only people who have done stupid stuff
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Speaker 1: like this. They follow in a long, grand tradition of
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Speaker 1: people who have set wildfires for all sorts of different reasons,
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Speaker 1: and a lot of them to get work. Yeah, you
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Speaker 1: have a list here, And of course we're not we're
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Speaker 1: going to praise the firefighters, not like we're saying a
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Speaker 1: lot of these firefighters starting fires. But it does happen
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Speaker 1: more than you would think. I I imagine we'll probably
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Speaker 1: throw some more out later on. But first, chuckers, right,
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Speaker 1: let's get to wildfires, how they work, what affects them.
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Speaker 1: The fire triangle. Yeah, we should probably start with the
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Speaker 1: fire triangle because it relates to not just forest fires
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Speaker 1: or wildfires, but all fires. All fire, Josh requires three things.
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Speaker 1: Um fuel obviously to burn air, to get oxygen to
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Speaker 1: the fire, because we know that, we all knows, we
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Speaker 1: all know that makes the fire burn hotter and bigger.
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Speaker 1: And then the heat source to bring the fuel to
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Speaker 1: the ignition temperature to begin with. And they call that
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Speaker 1: the fire triangle. And the goal of a wild firefighter
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Speaker 1: and or I guess probably more so a wild firefighter
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Speaker 1: is to remove one of those three components from the
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Speaker 1: scene and that will give them a better chance of
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Speaker 1: extinguishing the fire. Yeah, if you can bring the temperature down,
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Speaker 1: or starve the fire of oxygen something or get rid
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Speaker 1: of the fuel, right, yeah, all three those things have
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Speaker 1: to exist. And the reason why, like if you look
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Speaker 1: at wood as a fuel would as it pertains to fire,
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Speaker 1: is just a um solid store of hydrocarbons that are
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Speaker 1: released when the wood is heated to the flash point,
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Speaker 1: to the flash point. Um, and those hydrocarbons at the
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Speaker 1: flash point bind with oxygen in the air and it
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Speaker 1: can busts thanks to the spark, thanks to the heat. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and the flash point. Everything has a flash point. Apparently
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Speaker 1: everything will burst into flames at some point, like a
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Speaker 1: fahrenhyp four one is supposed to be the flash point
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Speaker 1: of books. Yes, right, yes, which is very cool. Title
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Speaker 1: woods flash point is um five hundred and seventy seventy
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Speaker 1: two degrees fahrenheit three D if you're into celsius, if
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Speaker 1: you're that kind of thing, and uh, that's when would
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Speaker 1: will burst into flames. Yes. Um. I've got a couple
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Speaker 1: of just quick stats here about five million acres of
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Speaker 1: woodland burn every year in the United States, and I
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Speaker 1: got a different set. It was one point two million.
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Speaker 1: But then I looked I saw that that stato. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I looked at the past decade five point nine million,
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Speaker 1: five point to nine point three nine point eight eight
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Speaker 1: point six eight four or seven three and seven. So
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Speaker 1: that's about five So I trust that one. And that
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Speaker 1: is dude. In two thousand nine, I'm sorry, let's go
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Speaker 1: to two thousand and six. There were ninety six thousand,
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Speaker 1: three five fires, wildfires in the US. It's a lot
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Speaker 1: of wildfires, isn't it crazy? And what's crazy is that
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Speaker 1: four fits of those are started by human activity. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: a little more than four fasts And that's nuts. Like,
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Speaker 1: I mean, there's a whole thing called lightning season, right
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Speaker 1: that when combined with this, um, this type of weather
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Speaker 1: called fire weather, which is very very dry, maybe drought
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Speaker 1: like conditions, um during warm summer months when it's very
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Speaker 1: hot out. Um. And all it takes is like apparently
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Speaker 1: like a train wheel causing a spark off of off
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Speaker 1: of the rail into some tinder and then bam, you've
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Speaker 1: got a wildfire. Um. But even all those uh don't
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Speaker 1: account for more than a fifth of wildfires. The rest
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Speaker 1: are like people throwing cigarettes out or looking for work
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Speaker 1: as firefighters, or not putting out their fire when they're camping. Yes,
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Speaker 1: that's a big one to UM. I have another couple
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Speaker 1: of stats from FEMA. There are total there are a
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Speaker 1: hundred and seventies six thousand intentionally set outdoor fires every
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Speaker 1: year in the United States. And a lot of those
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Speaker 1: I think, uh, they're prescribed burns. Right. No, no, no,
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Speaker 1: that that's like people. Yeah, but it's uh only you
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Speaker 1: know a certain amount of those are wild I think
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Speaker 1: sixty three are outdoor fires vegetation fires. So the others
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Speaker 1: are like trash fires, rubbish fires. Yeah, exactly, all of
7:52
Speaker 1: them make smoky the bear weep. Yeah. True. So, um,
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Speaker 1: there's fire weather, there's lightning season. Four fifths the fires
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Speaker 1: are started by humans, more than four fifths, he said.
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Speaker 1: We know about the fire triangle, right, So once combustion
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Speaker 1: is started from whatever the sources, there's a lot of factors.
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Speaker 1: Oh no, not necessarily. There's three large factors that combine too.
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Speaker 1: I guess give us an idea of what's going to
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Speaker 1: happen with this forest fire right now? Are these are these?
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Speaker 1: Fuel characteristics are like how facet will spread? No, it's fuel, weather,
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Speaker 1: and topography. Those are the big three. And then each
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Speaker 1: of those kind of has a few subcategories. But the
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Speaker 1: but fuel, the amount of the type of fuel, the
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Speaker 1: the type of weather that that's going on, like is
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Speaker 1: it fire weather is it not? And then topography the
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Speaker 1: lay of the land like if it's a lake, that's
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Speaker 1: not good topography for a forest fire. And I'm going
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Speaker 1: to use forest fire and wildfire interchangeably. I didn't see
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Speaker 1: anything that said that they're not one and the same.
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Speaker 1: Well they are today at least forest fire just kind
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Speaker 1: of rolls off the tongue a little more for me. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: my thick tongue. Law said wildfire, And I keep saying
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Speaker 1: wildflower to Jerry? Is it wildflower or wide fire? What
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Speaker 1: wide fire gonna go? Forest fire? It could be a
9:14
Speaker 1: wide fires. Uh so fuel Uh, you need a fuel
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Speaker 1: obviously to get the wildfire burning. In what they call
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Speaker 1: the they call it a fuel load is the amount
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Speaker 1: and it's a measured amount of fuel available per unit
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Speaker 1: area and it's usually tons per acre. So they there
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Speaker 1: they can actually they're good enough to guestimate that like
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Speaker 1: the biomass of like all this dry grass. Yeah, like
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Speaker 1: they know, like, man, this is gonna be a bad
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Speaker 1: one because we've got to you know, I don't have
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Speaker 1: any numbers, but whatever fuel load in this area of
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Speaker 1: the Colorado National Forest. And what's interesting is is, um
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Speaker 1: you would think that the fuel load, if you do
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Speaker 1: it in weight, because it's tons per acre, right, that
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Speaker 1: depending on the type of fuel, like if it's grass,
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Speaker 1: if it's lighter, that it's going to burn more quickly
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Speaker 1: because it has less of water. Yeah, right, true, because
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Speaker 1: that's a characteristic of the type of fuel, is how
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Speaker 1: how much moisture it has in it. Yeah, And the
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Speaker 1: density like twigs obviously will burn faster for two reasons.
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Speaker 1: One it's because there's it's not as densely packed, because
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Speaker 1: which will give it more oxygen. Yeah, there's less surface area. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And the second is it's smaller and it dries out
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Speaker 1: more quickly. Yeah, it's not like drying a tree or
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Speaker 1: a log. Just's got to take a long time to
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Speaker 1: dry out. Right. And then the same goes for density
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Speaker 1: with like say tots of pine straw. Right, if it's
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Speaker 1: very densely packed, Um, it's going to retain moisture in
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Speaker 1: the middle, which makes it harder to burn. Anytime you've
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Speaker 1: ever set pine straw on fire, you know, kid, it
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Speaker 1: smokes a lot if you'd throw a big mess on
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Speaker 1: your fire, right. But if it's kind of spread out,
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Speaker 1: it's uh, it drives more easily and it lets more
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Speaker 1: oxygen in between it, which is another need for fuel. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And the small fuel material they call flashy fuels and
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Speaker 1: were like four fingered, right, and on a chemical level,
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Speaker 1: they it varies on how long it takes these things
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Speaker 1: to ignite as well, beyond the fact that it's just
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Speaker 1: like more dense or bigger or more spread out. Right,
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Speaker 1: Like when I go camping, I will dry out camp
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Speaker 1: firewood beside the fire, and you can hear it, says,
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Speaker 1: you can see it. You can see the moisture sizzling
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Speaker 1: from the log and then you just inch it closer
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Speaker 1: and it'll just boom flash point. That's how it happens. Yeah.
11:28
Speaker 1: Oh another thing, josh, Um, As the fire pushes forward,
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Speaker 1: it's what it's gonna be doing. Because there's so much
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Speaker 1: heat associated with it and smoke, it's gonna dry out
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Speaker 1: the stuff, the fuel in front of it. So by
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Speaker 1: the time it gets there potentially, I mean, that's why
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Speaker 1: wildfire happens. By the time it gets there, it's already
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Speaker 1: dry and right for the picking, and it's just gonna
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Speaker 1: keep burning and keep burning. There's nothing to stop it. Basically,
11:54
Speaker 1: that's right. It feeds itself. Um something else that feeds it.
11:57
Speaker 1: So that was fuel, right. Yeah. The second category or
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Speaker 1: of factor that really determines how wildfire is going to
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Speaker 1: go is um weather big time. And you know when
12:09
Speaker 1: you think of weather, you think, I will you know, rain, snow,
12:12
Speaker 1: if it's raining, then of course the wildfire is gonna
12:14
Speaker 1: go out. They point that out in here too, But yeah,
12:17
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, I thought, um, Kevin went to great, Yeah,
12:22
Speaker 1: he definitely he dotted his eye on that one. He did,
12:25
Speaker 1: because yes, obviously, if it's pouring down rain, it's going
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Speaker 1: to keep everything moist or if it's been raining for
12:30
Speaker 1: a while, humidity helps big time. But the aspect of weather,
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Speaker 1: um that probably has more of an effect than any
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Speaker 1: is wind at So you've got wind outside of the fire,
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Speaker 1: which is going to push it along, push it in
12:45
Speaker 1: one direction or another. Well, it's very unpredictable. That's one
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Speaker 1: of the things the winds, especially the dry Santa Anas
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Speaker 1: in California. It's already hot and dry wind. So it
12:54
Speaker 1: might as well be fuel, right, Well, I guess it's
12:57
Speaker 1: sort of his fuel well traditionally, but it doesn't. It's
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Speaker 1: not necessarily fuel. But it brings more oxygen to the
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Speaker 1: fuel too, exactly right, Um, So it pushes fire along.
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Speaker 1: It's an oxygen delivery system. Wind is um and it doesn't.
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Speaker 1: There's a guy who's interviewed in this article. His names
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Speaker 1: Dr Terry Clark at the National Center for Atmospheric research
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Speaker 1: and he's created this model called coupled fire atmospheric dynamics.
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Speaker 1: Pretty cool, and basically what he's doing is figuring out
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Speaker 1: how fire interacts with the surrounding atmosphere and vice versa,
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Speaker 1: because apparently they feed off of each other. Yeah, fire
13:33
Speaker 1: can create its own weather system and weather pattern. Yes,
13:37
Speaker 1: you just seen it before. Like in a really hot fire,
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Speaker 1: these little tornadoes come up. It's a firewhirl, right, Um,
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Speaker 1: those can be enormous. It's basically like the heat from
13:47
Speaker 1: the fire creates a vortex, and the vortex is customarily horizontal,
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Speaker 1: but if something gets under it, it can stand upright
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Speaker 1: and it becomes a fire tornado that can throw the
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Speaker 1: whole logs. I can throw a burning tree like a mile.
14:04
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a monster, and it can
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Speaker 1: throw it a mile into where there previously was no fire.
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Speaker 1: And that's why fire forest fires are so hard to fight.
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Speaker 1: One reason why they are because all of a sudden,
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Speaker 1: you're fighting it on one front and you've seen them
14:17
Speaker 1: to leap from the tree tops and all of a sudden, dude,
14:19
Speaker 1: it's on this side of the mountain now, right. It's
14:22
Speaker 1: scary stuff, and treetops specifically by the way, that's a
14:25
Speaker 1: that's a type of fire onto itself. It's that's that's
14:27
Speaker 1: a crown fire, is what it's called. That's right. Um,
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Speaker 1: there's a these uh fire whirls, right, the fire tornadoes
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Speaker 1: they don't necessarily have to follow that. That um, that
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Speaker 1: process of starting out horizontally and standing up and then
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Speaker 1: moving like a tornado. There's another thing called a hairpin fireworld.
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Speaker 1: Is this the forward burst? This is amazing. Basically it's
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Speaker 1: like the fire develops so much I guess heat, it's
14:56
Speaker 1: vortexas do it's vortices do that. It shoots forward like
14:59
Speaker 1: a lamethrower and apparently, uh, these things are they get
15:03
Speaker 1: up to like sixty six ft wide, right yeah, Um,
15:08
Speaker 1: they can shoot three hundred plus feet at a hundred
15:11
Speaker 1: miles an hour. It just all of a sudden, like
15:13
Speaker 1: the fire just shot a hundred feet forward at a
15:17
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour and then in an instant, all
15:19
Speaker 1: of a sudden, year fire is going in a if
15:22
Speaker 1: not a different direction and additional direction. Right Because tracking
15:25
Speaker 1: these things, predicting these things, it's we've figured out or
15:29
Speaker 1: Dr Terry Clark has figured out, um that it's not
15:31
Speaker 1: just the atmospheric conditions. It's the fire creating its own stuff,
15:35
Speaker 1: its own wind, and just moving from both of these
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Speaker 1: and they call that spotting. If if they if it
15:42
Speaker 1: tosses embers to another spot, they call that spotting. And
15:46
Speaker 1: if it if it starts a fire obviously right. Um.
15:49
Speaker 1: And then temperature also is another factor. If it's warm
15:52
Speaker 1: out hot, um, you know, obviously that's an extra sixty
15:57
Speaker 1: hundred degrees that the temper that the sun doesn't have
16:00
Speaker 1: to heat something up to. Yeah you know, yeah, you never.
16:03
Speaker 1: That's why they burned mostly or most hot and wild
16:06
Speaker 1: during the day during the afternoon. Um. California. Like, I
16:10
Speaker 1: had to get used to camping in California because in Georgia,
16:13
Speaker 1: George is like a rainforest man. It's like there's never
16:15
Speaker 1: any fire threat. No. Plus it's so muggy. Yeah, it
16:19
Speaker 1: is so muggy all the time. There's no way you
16:21
Speaker 1: couldn't start a fire if you want to. You can't
16:23
Speaker 1: even strike a match outside right now. But uh, well,
16:27
Speaker 1: I'm just used to camping with a great, big, awesome
16:30
Speaker 1: camp fire. But once I headed west into like Colorado
16:33
Speaker 1: and New Mexico and California, they have you know, every
16:36
Speaker 1: state park. In national park, you go to a national forest,
16:38
Speaker 1: says have signs that say you know, fire risk UM high,
16:42
Speaker 1: no fires at all, or you have to apply for
16:45
Speaker 1: a fire permit with the the camp camp rangers, camp
16:49
Speaker 1: rangers forest rangers, and uh, I had to get used
16:53
Speaker 1: to either sneaking my fire, which is not right and
16:56
Speaker 1: risking fine, or not having one at all, which why
17:00
Speaker 1: don't you just go apply for a permit? Well, sometimes
17:03
Speaker 1: it was the fire risk was so high you're not
17:05
Speaker 1: supposed to have one at all, And I would still
17:07
Speaker 1: have one. And I probably shouldn't be saying that, but
17:10
Speaker 1: I'm super super careful. I didn't when I when I
17:12
Speaker 1: was living in the van for a little while. UM,
17:14
Speaker 1: I camped on the northern rim of the Grand Canyon
17:18
Speaker 1: and I started a fire, but I don't I didn't
17:21
Speaker 1: see any signs that said no fire or anything, but
17:23
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I could have totally missed it. Probably no
17:25
Speaker 1: one said anything, though. Yeah, and you know what, I
17:27
Speaker 1: was completely irresponsible for doing that. Just let me go
17:29
Speaker 1: on record and say that it was not the right
17:32
Speaker 1: thing to do, even though I was super careful, because
17:34
Speaker 1: accidents happened and I could have easily been that jerk
17:38
Speaker 1: that like didn't see the ember get away that started
17:40
Speaker 1: a forest fire. So I want to say, I mean,
17:42
Speaker 1: if you spark from a train's wheel can start a
17:45
Speaker 1: forest fire, then yes, very easily a fire that you
17:48
Speaker 1: started start a forest fire. That was very good, Chuck,
17:52
Speaker 1: way to see o A. Well, I didn't want to
17:53
Speaker 1: sound like I was bragging about it, like, oh, I
17:55
Speaker 1: was super careful. So it was cool. This it was
17:57
Speaker 1: not cool. There's this guy on um, yeah, I think
18:00
Speaker 1: take your break. Okay. Do you ever watch Malcolm in
18:02
Speaker 1: the Middle, Oh yeah, Um, there was this one. There
18:04
Speaker 1: was this one scene um where the mom was telling
18:07
Speaker 1: the dad he was he was saying that she was
18:10
Speaker 1: giving him grief about the stories that he was telling
18:13
Speaker 1: his kids, and he's like, they're cautionary tales, and she
18:16
Speaker 1: goes cautionary tales doing him with It was so cool.
18:20
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that show for a long time. But like
18:23
Speaker 1: all shows when it's about kids, when they got a
18:25
Speaker 1: little too old that you know, all of a sudden,
18:27
Speaker 1: his voice is down. Well, he he cashed out, like
18:31
Speaker 1: right about that time, he was like I'm out. Malcolm
18:33
Speaker 1: himself he was like, I've I've got fifteen Porsches and
18:36
Speaker 1: I'm very happy. I'm done. Well, yeah he went onto
18:39
Speaker 1: this big movie career. Yeah, that's very sorry. I Cranston
18:46
Speaker 1: though he's un't seen Breaking Bad, but it's supposed to
18:49
Speaker 1: be amazing, all right. The last thing, Josh is typography.
18:54
Speaker 1: That's what we talked about. A steep slope, it's gonna
18:56
Speaker 1: spread faster, usually spreads uphill, even though leave it to
19:00
Speaker 1: Australia to do something weird. Dr Terry Clark says he
19:05
Speaker 1: has a case study in Australia where the fire actually
19:08
Speaker 1: burned down a sloped mountain, which is pretty unusual. Yes,
19:12
Speaker 1: normally it burns up for a couple of reasons. The
19:16
Speaker 1: ambient wind um usually blows uphill. Um the steeper the
19:21
Speaker 1: slope the better because the fire, the smoke, in the heat,
19:25
Speaker 1: and the well for the fire. As concerned, it's like,
19:29
Speaker 1: give me a steep mountain, because the fire would be
19:32
Speaker 1: standing almost upright then and the smoke and the heat
19:35
Speaker 1: coming off the fire is um really drying out the
19:38
Speaker 1: fuel load ahead. So most of the time they burned
19:42
Speaker 1: upward up the mountain, and then they reached the crest
19:44
Speaker 1: and they're like, I should have thought this through because
19:47
Speaker 1: now I have to go down and I can't, which
19:49
Speaker 1: is good for fighting the fire, not good for the fire.
19:53
Speaker 1: Um they can besides burning all the vegetation, which is
19:58
Speaker 1: can be really bad, h uh. It can lead to
20:01
Speaker 1: things like erosion and mud slides later on because you
20:05
Speaker 1: mess with the with the ground like that and it's
20:07
Speaker 1: not stable like it once was. Yeah, I mean, like
20:10
Speaker 1: the one of the roles that roots a root system
20:13
Speaker 1: plays is holding the ground in place. And if you've
20:15
Speaker 1: burned the tree and the roots system out, it's just
20:18
Speaker 1: soil and the nice heavy rain comes and and that
20:22
Speaker 1: very thing happened josh in storm King Mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
20:28
Speaker 1: Two thousand acre forest burned and the underbrush burned on
20:32
Speaker 1: the steep slopes, and two months later they got a
20:35
Speaker 1: lot of heavy rain and it literally poured tons of
20:38
Speaker 1: mud and rock onto a stretch of Interstate seventy like
20:42
Speaker 1: engulfing cars, sweeping them into the Colorado River, all because
20:46
Speaker 1: of the fire months months ago. And we've seen one
20:48
Speaker 1: slides before. Remember Guatemala. Yeah, remember, like down the mountain
20:53
Speaker 1: there was still that path. You could see the where
20:55
Speaker 1: the path standing on this village where they never unearthed
20:59
Speaker 1: the people and it's like people's kids were running around. Yeah,
21:01
Speaker 1: it was so sad. Where we were standing was like
21:04
Speaker 1: six ft higher than it once was, right, yeah, right,
21:07
Speaker 1: six at least I would say that's awful. So, Chuck,
21:10
Speaker 1: if you want to put out a fire, well, first
21:12
Speaker 1: of all, they're beneficial, though we should say that at
21:14
Speaker 1: times burning the underbrush of a forest can prevent a
21:18
Speaker 1: larger fire later on, so they do have like prescribed burns,
21:23
Speaker 1: like you were talking about, Chuck, I inadvertently started a
21:26
Speaker 1: book club by mentioning again recently, have you noticed a
21:30
Speaker 1: lot of people have been writing and saying like, thanks man,
21:32
Speaker 1: I'm starting Yeah, and they're like, what about Yes, it's
21:35
Speaker 1: another book that's a fake book though, oh is it?
21:39
Speaker 1: It's yeah, that's the one where the guys like the
21:41
Speaker 1: Chinese made it to South America or Mexico. So there's
21:44
Speaker 1: about it. And I pilloried the guy. Okay, yeah, it's
21:49
Speaker 1: very he has very shaky, shaky evidence. That's fascinating stuff.
21:54
Speaker 1: But well have we not podcasted on that. Let's do
21:57
Speaker 1: it all right. I've read that today and I was like,
22:00
Speaker 1: why haven't we done this yet? We can totally do it.
22:02
Speaker 1: I think it took a little while for me for
22:04
Speaker 1: the bitterness to like leave my mouth like after I
22:06
Speaker 1: wrote that one, because the guy was getting tons of
22:08
Speaker 1: pressed at the time. But anyway, anyway, anyone who's read
22:12
Speaker 1: knows that North America it was basically a managed forest,
22:16
Speaker 1: and one of the ways that it was managed prior
22:18
Speaker 1: to Columbus was through prescribed burns. Like it there. It
22:23
Speaker 1: is very beneficially. It burns away the underbrush so you
22:27
Speaker 1: have less potential for accidental fires. Right, Remember we talked
22:30
Speaker 1: about recessions are kind of like that um and the
22:34
Speaker 1: it gets rid of disease, provides nutrients in the soil
22:38
Speaker 1: um awesome show after you'd like, you know, hit the
22:43
Speaker 1: peace pipe, just kick back and watch a forest fire go.
22:47
Speaker 1: So let's talk about putting these things out. Josher's uh.
22:52
Speaker 1: They have a couple of categories of the these elite firefighters.
22:57
Speaker 1: They're called hot shots and smoke jumpers. The hot shots.
23:01
Speaker 1: What's so funny, that's the names they give them. Yeah,
23:05
Speaker 1: that's pretty let's say that's pretty bad. A alright, hot
23:09
Speaker 1: shots they work in twenty person teams and they are
23:13
Speaker 1: trained there on the ground and they're trained to build
23:17
Speaker 1: mainly to build fire breaks, and that is when they
23:20
Speaker 1: strip the land of fuel ahead of the fire, or
23:24
Speaker 1: they will burn it ahead of the fire. Yeah, to
23:27
Speaker 1: stop it there have you ever seen that? Gods must
23:29
Speaker 1: be crazy too. No, the dude, the main dude, I
23:33
Speaker 1: can't remember his name. He um. There's a brush fire
23:37
Speaker 1: coming like a prairie fire, savannah fire coming at the
23:40
Speaker 1: main characters, and they're about to be engulfed in it.
23:43
Speaker 1: And the main bushman runs and grabs like a piece
23:48
Speaker 1: of grass or whatever and sets fire to the grass
23:52
Speaker 1: behind them that they are running into and burns it
23:55
Speaker 1: and then basically creates a circle. It's a backfire fire break,
23:59
Speaker 1: and they're all standing circle where there's no more fuel
24:01
Speaker 1: any longer. It's completely in otterly genius. Well it is.
24:04
Speaker 1: And it's also you have to be you have to
24:07
Speaker 1: really know what you're doing. You know, you have to
24:09
Speaker 1: put it in the exact right spot. I know that
24:10
Speaker 1: sometimes they'll do the firebreak and the fire will leap
24:14
Speaker 1: over that, and then that's kind of make you feel like, yeah,
24:18
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do well in a lot of cases.
24:22
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like I remember, was it two years ago?
24:25
Speaker 1: Was or maybe it's three years ago when they had
24:27
Speaker 1: all those wildfires, and uh, I remember thinking, like what
24:31
Speaker 1: we can do medically, and like, we can, you know,
24:34
Speaker 1: put a man on the moon, but we can't stop
24:37
Speaker 1: a fire. And it's that out of control because it's
24:39
Speaker 1: so huge and overwhelming, very deep chuck. Actually, there's there's
24:45
Speaker 1: smoke jumpers, which are hotshots that jump out of airplanes, right, yeah,
24:49
Speaker 1: and there's only a couple of hundred of them in
24:51
Speaker 1: the US, which I can imagine. That's a really specialized
24:55
Speaker 1: job and you have to be a tough mug to
24:58
Speaker 1: do that. That would be having long he did in Firestorm,
25:02
Speaker 1: I think he was. I didn't see it. Not many
25:05
Speaker 1: people saw it, actually, but I did copy the the
25:09
Speaker 1: description from IMDb. I thought it was just about like
25:13
Speaker 1: a firefighter and like forest fires, but of course, because
25:16
Speaker 1: it's Hollywood, they added some plot to it. Firefighter Jesse
25:20
Speaker 1: Graves has to save ornithologist Jennifer and other people in
25:24
Speaker 1: a forest fire. Like I thought that was it, but no,
25:27
Speaker 1: it was set up by the lawyer of a convicted killer,
25:30
Speaker 1: Earl Shay, who escaped from prison with several of his inmates,
25:33
Speaker 1: posing his firefighters to recover thirty seven million and stashed loot.
25:38
Speaker 1: So they were acting. They started the fire and purpose
25:40
Speaker 1: it was sort of like the guys who posed as
25:42
Speaker 1: uh ambulance drivers to get the dude out of prison.
25:46
Speaker 1: That sounds awesome, actually, I mean the plot description sounds
25:50
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. You can tell you hear like Howie Long,
25:54
Speaker 1: it's going to be awful. But like, I'm sure the
25:56
Speaker 1: writer of that was like, okay, I'm honestly yeah. Then
26:00
Speaker 1: he hears it's gonna be Firestorm starring how He Long,
26:03
Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm sure that the writer, Alan Smithy
26:06
Speaker 1: was pretty psyched about his project for a little while.
26:09
Speaker 1: So chuck, oh, uh, you can fight a fire using
26:15
Speaker 1: an air corps right, Oh yeah, that dropped fire retardant
26:20
Speaker 1: on the fire. You've seen the news footage the red stuff. Yes,
26:24
Speaker 1: Or they can drop tons of water and have you
26:26
Speaker 1: ever heard that urban legend? M oh yeah, but what
26:30
Speaker 1: is it? So there there is a forest fire somewhere
26:33
Speaker 1: we'll say California, and they put it out, and like
26:36
Speaker 1: six months later or whatever, some hikers walking through this
26:39
Speaker 1: area and looks up and notices that there's a scuba
26:42
Speaker 1: diver stuck in a tree right with the rebreather on
26:46
Speaker 1: and the the mask on and the flippers and everything,
26:49
Speaker 1: and um, he's dead. And the hiker can't figure out
26:54
Speaker 1: what's going on, and you know, leaves the forest and
26:56
Speaker 1: tell somebody about it, and they start doing some research
26:58
Speaker 1: and they figure out that he was scooped up by
27:01
Speaker 1: one of these planes that goes out to the ocean
27:03
Speaker 1: and like steps up a bunch of water and comes
27:05
Speaker 1: and dumps it on the totally not true, right wildfire
27:08
Speaker 1: now the fire, Yeah, it's a good one. I hate
27:12
Speaker 1: it when you burst urban legends though, because it bursts
27:15
Speaker 1: so many bubbles there's right now, so it's so beneficial, Like, yes,
27:21
Speaker 1: I know it's things right now, but in about forty
27:24
Speaker 1: five seconds, you're going to feel like a smarter person.
27:26
Speaker 1: That's true. We mentioned the fire retardant that is not
27:30
Speaker 1: just red stuff. It is um a chemical retardant containing
27:34
Speaker 1: phosphate fertilizer, and it cools down the fire slows it down.
27:38
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, it's main ingredient is water though, so
27:41
Speaker 1: it's like super superwater as far as you know. It's
27:44
Speaker 1: thinking about when when I was reading about smoke jumpers, um,
27:48
Speaker 1: the the human cannonball thing that Darka came up with.
27:52
Speaker 1: It would be perfect for that. You can just be
27:53
Speaker 1: like to shoot a bunch of smoke jumpers into the
27:57
Speaker 1: like over the fire into where you want them. You
28:00
Speaker 1: don't need the parachutes or something. Yeah, I can't imagine
28:04
Speaker 1: a smoke jumper's job like landing in the middle of
28:09
Speaker 1: that stuff. Yeah, that's crazy stuff, amazing and um. We
28:13
Speaker 1: also want to give a shout out to always great
28:16
Speaker 1: movies starring Richard dreyfuss No always, Oh, I thought you
28:23
Speaker 1: said we always want to give a shout always remember. Yeah,
28:26
Speaker 1: that was a good movie. John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Richard
28:28
Speaker 1: dreyfuss Um and that handsome dude who Yeah, that's right,
28:34
Speaker 1: the guy that played the handsome guy. And it was
28:36
Speaker 1: a remake of I think a guy named Joe or
28:38
Speaker 1: something is h And I also I believe Audrey Hepburn's
28:41
Speaker 1: final film was It. She was darling in it. She
28:45
Speaker 1: was she was pretty till the very end is that
28:48
Speaker 1: it is it? Okay, if you want to know more
28:50
Speaker 1: about forest fires, you should go into the beloved venerable
28:55
Speaker 1: website that we work for, how stuff works dot com
28:58
Speaker 1: and type in wildfires and we have it as one word.
29:01
Speaker 1: All right, Yes, uh. And if you type an ens
29:05
Speaker 1: gonna bring up a very cool article. It's some really
29:07
Speaker 1: great photography too. Um. I think the page one or
29:10
Speaker 1: page zero pick is just awesome looking. Um. And since
29:15
Speaker 1: I said handy search bar, that means it's time for
29:18
Speaker 1: a listener mail. It's not. Oh yeah, that's right. I
29:23
Speaker 1: don't have a listener mail for this one. Josh, and
29:24
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of what we could do instead.
29:26
Speaker 1: Would you come up with? Well? I thought about a
29:29
Speaker 1: call to action saying that you know, that'd be great
29:31
Speaker 1: if you could go to iTunes and leave us a
29:33
Speaker 1: rating and a review. Bad. Some people hate it when
29:36
Speaker 1: we do that, you know, like we're just begging for
29:39
Speaker 1: it or whatever. It's beats a pledge drive. Yes, it does, chuck.
29:43
Speaker 1: You do we ask that much from you guys? Really? No, no,
29:49
Speaker 1: so so actually we finally worked that up. Call to
29:51
Speaker 1: action or how about some love for Jerry via email too?
29:55
Speaker 1: It would be great. Oh that's nice. Some Jerry questions
29:58
Speaker 1: or both. We'll tell you all about Jerry. Yeah, ask
30:00
Speaker 1: us really personal questions about our life totally. We've just
30:04
Speaker 1: been waiting for everyone to ask Yeah. Um, you can
30:08
Speaker 1: ask those questions all sorts of ways. Um. First, if
30:11
Speaker 1: you want to go give us a rating, a review
30:13
Speaker 1: on iTunes, that's very nice if you thank you. Um.
30:16
Speaker 1: But if you want to ask us a question about Jerry,
30:19
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us. We have our own Twitter
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30:25
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast one word um. And then
30:29
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30:32
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30:36
Speaker 1: can send us a regular old email and you can
30:38
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Speaker 1: or New Jersey. Uh nine one point one Friday's between
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Speaker 1: know Radio Public Radio version or ninety point one in
30:49
Speaker 1: the Hudson Vali Valley. Um. And and is that not
30:56
Speaker 1: New York, New York's not in the Hudson Valley? Where's
30:58
Speaker 1: the Hudson, New York State? So that's upstake? Is that
31:02
Speaker 1: where Albany is? I keep hearing like everybody in law
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31:07
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