Fire!

[Volkonski]

Solvents for glue and paint remover are very light and highly flammable.

[Volkonski]

Hwy 59 is closed between Shepherd and Livingston.

[Volkonski]

[Phoenix520]

I’m going to start my new job Monday as CEO of my beloved’s manufacturing company. This is going to royally screw my commute

[Foggy]

You'll be good at that.

[RTH10260]

The freeway is brunt toast

[Whatever4]

Completely logical to have a pallet factory/storage area under the overpass of a critical artery. /s

Between this and other melted overpass incidents, terrorists on both home and away teams are taking notes.

[northland10]

While it makes expansion near impossible, there are some advantages to Chicago having many highways in a pit instead of elevated.

I think there are parts of the Kennedy that are elevated but losing a stretch of that road won't impact speeds on that highway.

[Maybenaut]

According to the Virginia Department of Forestry, the Quaker Run fire is 61% contained.

I can usually see the Blue Ridge in the distance, but today all I see is smoke.

IMG_8479.jpeg (133.85 KiB) Viewed 15689 times

[Phoenix520]

Take-aways from the federal inspection of the fire under I-10:

Likely arson
The section will NOT have to be rebuilt, just shored up and resurfaced.

Surprisingly, our commuting cohort is clever and found other ways to get where they were going, adding an average of only 10 minutes to their commute.

[northland10]

Earlier today I was driving through one of the village's parking garages and saw some contractors doing regular maintenance on sprinkler system. I began to wonder if maybe governments should start requiring businesses that lease/own space under an elevated road to install sprinklers. It would not help in the cases where a vehicle crashed and caught on fire under a bridge or overpass, but it would potentially reduce damage for fires like the LA and earlier Atlanta one (where stuff was being stored).

[Estiveo]

[Volkonski]

California wildfires could be transforming natural metals into cancer-causing compounds

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... press.coop

Wildfires in parts of the U.S. West may be transforming a benign form of chromium into its cancer-causing counterpart — potentially endangering first responders and surrounding communities, a new study has found.

The research, published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, identified high levels of the hazardous metal hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, at specific types of burn sites along California’s North Coast.

Also known as “the Erin Brockovich chemical,” chromium-6 emerged in the public eye in the 1990s, after Brockovich — then a legal aid — found that it was contaminating drinking water and sickening residents of Hinkley, Calif.

This toxic compound, which raises cancer risk when inhaled or ingested, was not present at the sites of interest for the study before they burned.

Rather, soils and plants at these locations were rich in naturally-occurring trivalent chromium — chromium-3 — an essential nutrient that helps the human body break down glucose.

While chromium-6 can also exist naturally in the environment, this toxic form of the metal more often contaminates communities via runoff and wastewater from industrial processes.

Wildfire smoke plumes are known to transport dangerous pollutants such as aerosols, gases and fine particulate matter, but the researchers wondered whether the same could be said for heavy metals, and what the risk might be to firefighters and those who reside downwind.

Years ago amongst other responsibilities I was my employer's expert on cooling towers and treatment of cooling water to prevent scaling and corrosion of cooling water pipes and heat exchangers.

Too much scaling (build up of salts on the pipe wall) and the pipe heat transfer would reduce. Pipes might even plug. To much corrosion and the pipes would leak.

In the bad old days we used chromate additives in the water. This worked very well and was cheap. Then the cancer links were found and the government banned chromates.

So everyone switched to phosphate-based treatments. These worked less well and were harder to control.

Worst of all phosphates promoted growth of plants and algae in waterways (and visible soap suds). So they were restricted.

Then we moved on to organic water treatments which worked poorly and were very expensive.

A few years ago I read about some new treatments which were claimed to be effective and cheap. I haven't followed up but based on experience with some snake oil treatments offered back in the day I have my doubts.

My favorite snake oil ineffective treatment was magnetic water treatment. This involved putting magnets around the outside of water pipes and discontinuing chemical treatments.

A large multinational petrochemical company (not mine) tried this and published papers touting the effectiveness of it.

Questions came down from on high in my company about why we weren't doing this. Throughout my career I had to deal with non-technical high level managers who saw articles in the popular press and took them as gospel.

Well, it wasn't long before technical papers appeared debunking magnetic water treatment.

At that other petrochemical company massive leaks occurred.

What happened was that when they put in magnets and stopped chemical water treatment the water became more acidic (lower pH). At first this dissolved the scaling and heat transfer rates went up. Then the acidic water started to dissolve the metal pipes. Leaks all over the place.

My management stopped pestering me about magnets.

In any case, hexavalent chromium and other heavy metal salts are bad news for the environment.

[bill_g]

What happened was that when they put in magnets and stopped chemical water treatment the water became more acidic (lower pH). At first this dissolved the scaling and heat transfer rates went up. Then the acidic water started to dissolve the metal pipes. Leaks all over the place.

Shades of the Pontiac Water crisis.

[johnpcapitalist]

California wildfires could be transforming natural metals into cancer-causing compounds

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... press.coop

Wildfires in parts of the U.S. West may be transforming a benign form of chromium into its cancer-causing counterpart — potentially endangering first responders and surrounding communities, a new study has found.

The research, published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, identified high levels of the hazardous metal hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, at specific types of burn sites along California’s North Coast.

A few years back, I was doing IT and analytics consulting for a consumer durables manufacturer. They used vinyl in packaging, and when they changed suppliers, they started failing product safety testing because of ludicrously heavy levels of hexavalent chromium in the package. It took a while to figure out what was going on. Apparently, Chinese vinyl is made from coal as a feedstock rather than petroleum, and their coal contains a lot of hexavalent chromium which they don't (or can't) filter out. I can't remember what concentration is considered too much, but it wasn't that many parts per billion in water. Nasty stuff...

[Frater I*I]

In any case, hexavalent chromium and other heavy metal salts are bad news for the environment.

I work with this stuff on a regular basis, as it's a key component of the epoxy primers I use...

[MN-Skeptic]

Massive 4-alarm fire in New Jersey engulfs industrial warehouse near Newark airport -

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

What happened was that when they put in magnets and stopped chemical water treatment the water became more acidic (lower pH). At first this dissolved the scaling and heat transfer rates went up. Then the acidic water started to dissolve the metal pipes. Leaks all over the place.

Shades of the Pontiac Water crisis.

You probably mean Flint, and yes. Flint originally got its water from DWSD* (now called GLWA) and while in receivership, wanted to switch to a different source, mainly due to politics. However, the new pipeline was not going to be in place for a couple of years, and rather than take a good deal to extend the contract, Flint decided to minimally treat river water. Problem was, DWSD used phosphates to coat the pipes, and when the switch was made, not only did Flint choose not to add phosphates (they had the equipment to do so), the water they were now using was downstream of Dow Chemical and had a lot more contamination. The acid quickly ate away the protective phosphate coating and exposed the lead service pipes.

*Disclaimer: At the time of the switch, DWSD was a client of mine, though I almost immediately afterwards hired on to my current position with a municipal utility that provides drinking water, among other products. My job responsibilities include designing upgrades to our water facilities, including the phosphate system that we still use. And if I can brag a little, my employer was the first in the nation to start replacing all lead service pipes, although a city in Wisconsin finished a few months before us - we were 85% complete went the Flint Water Crisis hit.

[FiveAcres]

I have an in-law that lives in an older part of Denver, Colorado. We were visiting over Thanksgiving, and my in-law told me not to drink the tap water because of lead pipe contamination. There is a fifteen year plan to remediate the pipes, but in the meantime, the utility is providing a water pitcher and the filters to use in it. My in-law also uses a specific filter in the fridge water system.

[bill_g]

Shades of the Pontiac Water crisis.

You probably mean Flint, and yes. Flint originally got its water from DWSD* (now called GLWA) and while in receivership, wanted to switch to a different source, mainly due to politics.

In fact yes I did mean Flint. Doh! Thank you for the correction.

I love talking about water systems. There are always politics attached that muddy the waters so to speak. I'm starting a project next week for an Oregon Coast muni that completed replacing their early 19th century wood stave mains during the Clinton administration. That project started during FDR! The coast tends to have a whole lotta no money, but no lack of people who know how to spend the public treasury better than the previous guy. This year they want to discuss SCADA radio which is near and dear to my heart.

[RTH10260]

interesting procedure to handle electric vehicle fire

[RTH10260]

[RTH10260]

Chile

[RTH10260]

Six months after Maui wildfire, 5,000 survivors still stranded: ‘We’re tired of broken promises’
Red Cross says only a third of households who sought emergency shelter have moved into homes, as governor’s pledge rings hollow

Nina Lakhani in West Maui
Thu 8 Feb 2024 13.00 CET

Every afternoon Diana Tevaga rushes back from work to her hotel room to feed her pitbull, Pe’a, and tabby cat, Kenzie, bracing herself for another dispiriting evening searching online for an affordable apartment in Maui.

Tevaga, 41, has been living in a hotel since losing her home – a rent-controlled apartment she’d shared with her mother and pets – in the catastrophic Lahaina wildfire on 8 August. Before the fire, she spent evenings with her nephews and nieces, who lived in the same neighborhood. Now, Tevaga watches reality TV and eats Red Cross meals with other survivors who have no place else to go.

“As soon as I wake up, there’s a physical tightness in my chest. I worry about where we will go when the help runs out. I am grateful, but this hotel is not a home, it’s a shelter. It’s not right that so many of us are still here. How can we dream about rebuilding when we don’t have a stable home?” said Tevaga, wiping away tears.




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... er-housing

[Lani]

Roseanne Barr lives on the Big Island and grows macadamia nuts. Awhile back, some people were excited to have her there. That didn't come out well.

She took bags of clothing to Maui after the fire so she could tell everyone how wonderful she is. That didn't work out well. She should have asked how to help.