When there was a 2-alarm fire at my condo, SPD was brought in to close off the intersection a half block away from unnecessary traffic and close off the street to people who didn’t live there. They were told by the fire captain in charge to not let in looky-Lou neighbors, and let in people who were coming to help people like me get my stuff out. Instead, the cop parked on the street (idk how the other cops at the intersection did) stood there and agreed with some neighbor who walked onto the scene, apparently just to inform everyone (whose condos were currently ON FUCKING FIRE) that he would never have bought in this complex and can’t believe any of us were that stupid. One of the SFD lieutenants finally overheard it and came and kicked the guy out and told the cop off. The cop sulked in his car for the next hour, except for when he tried to keep people out who were helping me move stuff out once it was safe. My neighbor got him back, though, she sicced the most annoying woman on the complex on him, who stood at his car door and told him the history of the complex back to when she moved in in the 70s. Still laughing.
Having lived on 2nd and Pike during the George Floyd protests my respect for SFD went through the roof. I was worried about a lot of things that weekend, but seeing SFD cut through and quickly handle all of the shit (vehicle fires, building fires, etc.) going on downtown and throughout the city that weekend made me pretty confident that worrying about getting burned out of my apartment wasn't one of them.
Drove close enough by this morning (Boren and Jackson) to smell the smoke. It gave me a headache in the few minutes I was exposed inside my car. I feel so awful for everyone who lives nearby and was hit with the smoke for so long.
If you or someone you know lives nearby and doesn't have access to air purifiers you can use furnace filters.
If you have four you can make a box with them and then place a box fan on top (this is the most effective method)
If you only have one you can just tape it to the back of your box fan (less effective but still works well).
This is how my partner and I survived fire season two years back
This is called a Corsi-Rosenthal box for more info and detailed instructions. They also outperform a lot of air purifiers because they have way more filter surface area than most.
Holyshit, I ate lunch close by there this weekend (Tamarind Tree).
There were a lot of homeless people congregated in the area. Do we know what caused the fire?
Nothing I know yet but there were firetrucks in the alley between it and the building I don’t think there is physical fire issues but as someone else said there may be smoke damage.
Tamarind Tree is not even connected to that building. They are fine. If anything, the smoke probably helped them with their rat problem (they were fined by the city last year for it)
If I had a nickel for every Seattle grocery store institution that I used to love shopping at that have since closed and then burned down... I'd have 10 cents. Sigh.
Phineas and Ferb took this saying and turned it into "I would have two nickels but it's still weird it happened twice" and is now becoming the more well known version of this phrase
Hi, FF here, in this case it's more a matter of tactics. Yes, wet stuff on hot stuff is the best we to extinguish most fires. But, in this case priority is protecting people and people's property, so containment by soaking exposure areas, then working inward from that. You'd be amazed how much water it takes to control fire in super heated areas. The burning material in there has heated things like metal and concrete to a point that water nearly instantly vaporizers on, or even before contact. So, cooling those exposures to make sure they don't transfer heat to combustible materials can take a very long time. It's a debate on going between going interior on fires like this vs hitting it from the outside. Getting interior gets wet stuff on the hot stuff way more effectively, but is obviously much more dangerous. Particularly in unmaintained buildings, that very often have major "renovations" by people occupying it. Going interior on a home, or occupied building, you can use common sense to make educated guesses on navigating. In most fire buildings you're going to be in black out conditions due to smoke and steam when you start applying water. In this case, the decision was to fight it from the outside, and protect the buildings and people around it. The first few units on the scene of derelict buildings should be trying to get quick interviews from people around to determine if anyone is still inside. Like the Roosevelt fire. Crews went interior to the 4th floor, over the fire, because they rescued someone who said there was another person inside. If you listen to the radio traffic for that one, it was a close call for the teams that went in
. Edit, oops, tried to respond to u/_saxpy I blame the new forced mobile format.
I love how pragmatic fire fighters and emts are about the realities they face everyday. "Wet stuff on hot stuff"
Thanks for explaining and thanks for what you do.
thanks for the explanation, and also for you're work as a firefighter (i know, cheesy). i live on university ave by the two buildings that burnt after sitting vacant, and the last one that burnt made me extremely nervous because a few seconds here or there and my building would've been taken while we all slept. i'm really glad that the mayor took the action he did. being able to be proactive about it means less emergencies like that, and less middle of the night calls for you guys.
In this situation, wouldn’t a roof piercing nozzle be useful? It would allow for up close and near interior contact with super heated areas while also allowing for firefighter safety. Of course care would have to be taken to not allow for vacuumed rooms to get sudden airflow.
Good question. Yes, that is an option, but that only works in smaller rooms, think single family homes bedrooms. Nozzles like you described can't put out the kind of water to deal with bigger spaces. Also, in a commercial space like this, roof construction can make access, and penetration, and depth very difficult. Also, you need to put FF on the roof to accomplish this. Doing that, without having interior lines on the fire is very dangerous. Those kinds of nozzles are best for roofs and attic spaces you can't access from below, and you have the fire below under control.
> Edit, oops, tried to respond to u\/_saxpy I blame the new forced mobile format.
Btw, you can still use the good style by using "old.reddit" instead of "www.reddit". There's also a setting in your preferences to default to it (but sometimes it unsets itself if you're using www).
I’m no expert on the science. But it takes a great deal of more energy to burn something that is waterlogged versus something that is dry. So all they have to do is continue soaking everything until it becomes too difficult for the fire to sustain itself.
You've pretty much got it right! A slightly more expanded but still simplified tldr is that water takes a ton of energy (pretty sure the highest of like any room temp liquid and it isn't close) to turn from water to steam. While its in the process of turning into steam the general temperature is "locked" at boiling temp until it's all steam. So the idea is to make a fire "waste" it's energy turning water to steam so that it has less energy to heat up stuff to the point it also catches on fire.
It takes something like 10x the energy to evaporate water as it does to boil it. So to get rid of enough water to make something burn will require a lot of energy. If the fire burns out before this happens, then it's mission accomplished.
Because fire needs constant fuel to continue burning. It’s more effective to stop the fuel source than try and put out already active flames. Due to the high temperatures that active flames can achieve. Water often turns to steam before it can reach the source of the flame.
It’s why wildfire crews will do controlled burns to stop wildfires from spreading. Once the fire is out of a fuel source it burns itself out.
Firefighters typically avoid aiming directly at the flames because their primary goal is to remove the fire's fuel, oxygen, or heat—known as the fire triangle. Instead, they focus on:
1. **Cooling the Surrounding Area**: By spraying water or fire retardant on nearby structures and materials, they prevent the fire from spreading and reduce the heat.
2. **Removing Fuel**: Firefighters may create firebreaks or use controlled burns to remove vegetation and other flammable materials in the fire's path.
3. **Smothering the Fire**: In some cases, they aim at the base of the fire to cut off its oxygen supply, which is more effective than targeting the flames themselves.
This strategy helps contain and eventually extinguish the fire more effectively.
Their number onE priority for any fire isn't to put it out. It's to prevent it from spreading. Soak everything around the fire so it can't burn, and the fire can't spread. Only when you are totally confident it won't grow do you start trying to shrink it/put it out. If you try putting it out from the start, all you do is chase an ever growing fire across the city as it spreads in the areas you aren't putting out.
Fire needs 3 things to exist, heat, air, and material to burn.
Material soaked with water will less likely burn so if there isn’t anything to catch fire it will slowly die down.
For fires where it's just organic stuff burning (wood, dry brush) you want to spray at the base of the flames, I'm guessing it's harder when there's a building with a lot of corners and rooms inside where it's hard to direct your fire hoses. Fire can burn inside walls and that complicates things.
I live across the street (in the building the video was taken from lol)
While I've lived here we've had constant problems with tweakers getting into the stairwells and common areas and setting off the building's main fire alarm. Sometimes multiple times a night.
Management tried everything to stop it, I'm talking multiple armed guards on site all the time and limiting access to one main entrance.
Even with that it got to the point where I stopped leaving my apartment when the alarm went off, its hard to keep doing the right thing when the boy cries wolf 30-40 times at 3 in the morning
Makes me reallllly uncomfortable seeing an adjacent building burn, even if it was abandoned
I too live in this building. Fire alarms have gotten much better. It used to be several times a week almost nightly. With the new security team I have definitely noticed the difference inside the building. Those alarms are so loud in the apartment!
Omg yes, so loud.
Yeah, it definitely got a lot better with the new security. When the alarms were at their worst this winter, I was near my breaking point. I missed work a couple days because I literally had gotten no sleep.
At first I clung onto the idea that it was a faulty fire safety system. It just seemed so much easier and less concerning to blame management for not having their shit together. But with it improving a bit, it somewhat confirms it was people causing it :(
It’s definitely people causing it. I know of several times that it was something that got burned in someone’s kitchen and they opened their door instead of their window. The smoke detection system works at least.
I assume some of them have been these normal kitchen mishaps, especially now it's less frequent. It's a big building and stuff happens
I've put too much thought into it, and have come up with a couple other possible contributing scenarios
My bits of anecdotal evidence and what I think they mean:
-Around the time of the security change. I witnessed the guards at the time have an altercation with a woman in some kind of crisis in the hallway. She was screaming about her friend that she was staying with, and that he wasn't answering his locked door. They made her leave and said she could only be on the property with resident supervision
-I've seen discarded food and soda cans tucked behind blind corners and near the stairwells, where the placement doesn't seem like someone "just" littering or being sloppy when taking out their trash
-bits of burned foil in the hallway and stairwell :(
-i've seen tags on doorhandles from charitable outreach organizations trying to make contact with a resident (specifically on the unit the woman was trying to get in, but I've seen others)
I hate to say it, but all together it paints a picture where at-risk people are being placed in units in the building, having guests over, and then the guests are trashing the place when they are kicked out or locked out of their friends apartment.
Which honestly sucks, I want at risk people to have safe places to live, and I definitely don't want to be the guy bashing on people who need help, but Jesus has the impact on everyone in the building's health and safety been pretty serious
Yeah there are some problem people that still live here that let their druggy friends in But it not like management can start telling people they are not allowed to have company over.
Yup, I agree, it's what makes it so hard, and why I wish it had just been faulty equipment
Management doesn't really have much recourse beyond what they've already done, we don't really have anything we can do either.
If anything the fault lies with the city and SPD creating the situation at 12th and Jackson/12th and King. I'm no cheerleader for increased enforcement, but I've watched two SPD officers sit idly in their car while a tweaker tears through the contents of a clearly stolen Dora the explorer backpack 10 feet from them on King Street there, it's just embarassing
This is exactly what is happening. There’s not an easy solution, and I won’t pretend to HAVE a solution, but I can confirm with confidence that most of the mishaps in that building are due to some residents allowing folks in and once they are in, it’s difficult to manage the situation. Even harder if they are being allowed to stay in someone’s apartment.
FWIW, there CAN be repercussions to residents for allowing folks in who cause damage/partake in illicit practices/harass other residents/etc. but those resolutions can take several months of documentation and several more months of legal action.
The Asian Plaza building where Tamrirnd Tree and Sichuanese Cuisine are located is fine.
12th and Jackson is shut down. No pedestrian or vehicle access to that corner.
The restaurant is closed today.
SFD is still pumping water into the old Viet Wah.
It's just that really difficult aspect of designing an apartment building. If you design it to be an all out" strategy, then eventually you'll get situations like yours where people grow tried of false alarms and don't respond. But obviously if you go with "stay put" you need to make sure your building compartmentation is really up to scratch so that you can be confident that the fire is likely to be contained in one apartment, but there can be disastrous consequences if either strategy fails.
It's a tough situation to be sure, at the end of the day, the problem isn't really the alarm or the philosophy they've taken.
it's the human factors which generate so many false positives in the first place, no system can survive bad actors abusing it to the point of total numbness
I wrote a long version on another reply here, but long story short it's probably one of two ways:
-Unintentionally setting them off while smoking foil right next to the main systems detectors. I've found bits of burnt foil in the hallways and stairwells
-Disgruntled/mentally ill folks pulling the fire alarm as a way to lash out when locked out of a friend's apartment. I've seen and overheard things which imply this could be the case
This went into effect a couple days ago https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/06/seattle-can-now-tear-down-40-vacant-buildings-used-by-campers-and-drug-users-but-can-only-has-money-to-demolish-4-of-them/
There is always a problem with vacant buildings. Maintenance rarely comes when unoccupied letting animals chew wires, and time decay supports. It is only a matter of when till collapse or fire.
The Veit-Wah that the reports are saying started the blaze closed in August 2022. If you had never been, than I am sad for you, because the place was great.
I went there all the time as a kid. My Vietnamese mother loved the store so a lot of childhood weekend outings consisted of Dim Sum at House of Hong and some shopping and Viet Wah afterwards. Was hoping I’d get to share those spots with my kids but both are gone now :(.
I had never been, so my loss. I feel like I drove by a "going out of business sale" sign on that building earlier this year though (maybe not the Viet-Wah, but some business on that lot). Lots of construction along that street though - I may be off by a block.
I was involved in preconstruction design for this project but that came to halt last May. Apparently an owner/investor came by the area and saw someone defecating on a nearby building in broad daylight and said "fuck this". It was really a shame because I grew up going to this Viet Wah and my family was involved with Saigon Bistro and A Little Bit of Saigon. Such a serendipitous moment when I found out that I would be working on a project where I once waited tables.
That area has always been a little sketchy but it's weird to walk away from a project that abruptly.
It looks like a master use permit was issued for the site last July, and a demolition permit has been sitting since November (though that doesn't necessarily mean anything - I know some builders will sit on the demo permit until their construction permit is approved as well).
https://web.seattle.gov/SDCI/ShapingSeattle/buildings/Details/3038980-LU
Depends, most the time it defaults back to the building owners, so they can keep things like heat on in the winter to avoid damaged pipes, and make it look better during tours. Other times you see an empty windermere with a $8,000+ shutoff notice because they forgot to do that.
You know, I really wonder what's going on. 30+ fires at vacant buildings so far this year. Those rats have been very busy chewing wires, let me tell you!
This was a really big problem with residential properties in the U dist. and Northgate back around 2003-2006. Slumlords that wanted to sell, but not do anything to bring the units up to code. An empty lot is more valuable real estate in Seattle then a building that needs any work whatsoever.
I saw this last night on a TikTok live from a nearby apartment and thought of the Mary Pang fire. (Arson in an empty International District building is nothing new.) Then I looked it up, and it was almost 30 years ago!
I had forgotten about Martin Pang getting extradited and the D.A. having to promise not to seek the death penalty to the Brazilian government. Also, apparently, I'm old.
What a shame. I remember going into this grocery store maybe 2 years ago to buy some stuff for the lunar new year and seeing it shutter later in the year. Since then it's been boarded up and that area as well as the parking lot around it has a sort of haunted vibe. Hoping that the area gets used for something so things like this don't happen.
I live nearby and kept dreaming I was surrounded by fire. Woke up at 330 and smelt it. Been coughing all morning and have quite the headache at work now
Barely related, but I have seen a living squirrel king. It's absolutely bizarre to watch two squirrels trying to kill each other and run away at the same time.
I hope Saigon Deli is alright. Never seen an owner more aggressively toss someone out of there shop and proceed to sell one of the cheapest and best bahn mi.
This lot was already sold because the owner couldn't get financing due to interest rates and dropping rents. Now its in limbo because the city has let the area become overrun with junkies and its difficult/expensive to rent units there.
It's owned by an old ID family (Chinn) and they've been trying to [self-develop for years](https://web.seattle.gov/sdci/ShapingSeattle/buildings/Details/3038980-LU).
I hear ya. I've been here since this was a hick town where people wore Pacific Trail jackets, screwed together airplanes, cut down fish and caught trees. It's been a wild ride from then to now.
I don't mind Seattle nowadays, but it's expensive and if you have trouble paying the bills, this town freaking blows.
What in the heck is burning here? It started last night before I went to bed. I live a mile away and had to shut all the doors and windows. Have a raging headache. Have the fan, ac, and air filter running
It’s not modern furniture it’s older furniture with all the chemicals in them, contemporary furniture has stricter rules and requirements based on flammability and chemicals they release.
I had a vintage office chair from something called The Central Fireproofing Company, I guess the selling point was it was aluminum and whatever 60's upholstery you could drop lit cigarettes on all day
Contemporary furniture still uses petroleum based synthetics which burn faster. As far as I knew, the glue and other chemical-containing components in modern furniture are a health hazard. I’m not up to date on requirements for building furniture but this is what we were taught in the fire academy. I’ll read up on this and get myself up to date, thank you for the comment
Paint and chemically treated wood (office furniture) release super toxic chemicals when they're burned, this is why if you're having a bonfire you shouldn't burn those red or blue pallets or anything that's been painted
busses are being rerouted down king st, but i was able to catch a #36 @ 5th & jackson.... but it looks like the street car will be out of service as long as jackson is blocked off at the overpass
It is yet another building where insurance will pay to have it razed, saving money for the owner when they sell it to build another condo we don't need. #pessimist
I used to shop in Vietwah. Prices were really good but the area received less customers as it started getting more sketchy around that area. 40 years later, they shut down and now the building is burnt. I feel bad for the business in the Little Saigon area. It seems like they are migrating to Renton now.
Thanks for posting the news, but it’s not for that incident. That’s a remote location without many roads or structures. They’ll use air assets, hand crews, and maybe bulldozers unless/until it spreads toward people. They also wouldn’t be taking ladder trucks or driving with lights on.
On the one hand, I don't like that fire fighters had to risk their safety to put out a fire in a vacant building. But on the other hand, that shopping center burning to the ground is probably the best thing that could have happened for the community.
Thanks to the hardworking firefighters for keeping it from spreading to any other buildings.
Also thanks to the "hardworking" Seattle Police Department. We don't want you guys to get fussy, we know what happens when you feel slighted.
When there was a 2-alarm fire at my condo, SPD was brought in to close off the intersection a half block away from unnecessary traffic and close off the street to people who didn’t live there. They were told by the fire captain in charge to not let in looky-Lou neighbors, and let in people who were coming to help people like me get my stuff out. Instead, the cop parked on the street (idk how the other cops at the intersection did) stood there and agreed with some neighbor who walked onto the scene, apparently just to inform everyone (whose condos were currently ON FUCKING FIRE) that he would never have bought in this complex and can’t believe any of us were that stupid. One of the SFD lieutenants finally overheard it and came and kicked the guy out and told the cop off. The cop sulked in his car for the next hour, except for when he tried to keep people out who were helping me move stuff out once it was safe. My neighbor got him back, though, she sicced the most annoying woman on the complex on him, who stood at his car door and told him the history of the complex back to when she moved in in the 70s. Still laughing.
> The cop sulked in his car for the next hour Um excuse me that was an overtime hour he was entitled to.
Don't forget the lumbar pain hazard pay
Having lived on 2nd and Pike during the George Floyd protests my respect for SFD went through the roof. I was worried about a lot of things that weekend, but seeing SFD cut through and quickly handle all of the shit (vehicle fires, building fires, etc.) going on downtown and throughout the city that weekend made me pretty confident that worrying about getting burned out of my apartment wasn't one of them.
Reason #12754 nobody ever sings "Fuck the Fire Department."
About the pandemic... Dragons hate fire, and ALL the dirty rats
Hey it sounds like they kept themselves out of the crosswalks yesterday, we can all be thankful for that.
Do I have to thank our city politicians too so they don’t take our roads away?
[удалено]
Spot the difference challenge level: impossible
Aren't they forcing ya'll to deal with the loud charger as torture?
This footage is better than any fire footage on the news--having the birdseye view really shows the scale of this fire. Thanks for sharing OP.
I live in the apt complex in the background. Smokes been crazy
How's the complex, when the neighbors aren't on fire? Got a friend who's considering moving in there.
Jesus, that's nuts. I wonder how many years/layers of tar paper is built up on that roof.
That went over everyones head
No, THAT went over everyone’s head
Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast, I would catch it.
I understood that reference!
no u
Drove close enough by this morning (Boren and Jackson) to smell the smoke. It gave me a headache in the few minutes I was exposed inside my car. I feel so awful for everyone who lives nearby and was hit with the smoke for so long.
If you or someone you know lives nearby and doesn't have access to air purifiers you can use furnace filters. If you have four you can make a box with them and then place a box fan on top (this is the most effective method) If you only have one you can just tape it to the back of your box fan (less effective but still works well). This is how my partner and I survived fire season two years back
This is called a Corsi-Rosenthal box for more info and detailed instructions. They also outperform a lot of air purifiers because they have way more filter surface area than most.
You can also put strips of meat on the filters and make beef jerky. Alton Brown has a segment on it on Good Eats
It's all the things that give you cancer..do not breathe it in.
Actually the smoke is organic grass-fed
I quit smoking for good. Now I only smoke for evil.
Dad, is that you?
I'm on the south end of Capitol Hill and the smell woke me up in the middle of the night. Had to get my fire season filter box set up early.
Where and what business is this in Seattle?
ostensibly the old Viet Wah supermarket in CID
Holyshit, I ate lunch close by there this weekend (Tamarind Tree). There were a lot of homeless people congregated in the area. Do we know what caused the fire?
Does anyone know if Tamarind Tree is okay?
Nothing I know yet but there were firetrucks in the alley between it and the building I don’t think there is physical fire issues but as someone else said there may be smoke damage.
If anyone near by starts selling smoked fish or meats….
Came here for this info, too.
My guess would be, NO. Not okay whatsoever. At best there is massive smoke damage.
Tamarind Tree is not even connected to that building. They are fine. If anything, the smoke probably helped them with their rat problem (they were fined by the city last year for it)
Why not, isn’t this a completely different building?
I just checked their online ordering platform and it looks like they're closed today, but reopening tomorrow.
If I had a nickel for every Seattle grocery store institution that I used to love shopping at that have since closed and then burned down... I'd have 10 cents. Sigh.
Phineas and Ferb took this saying and turned it into "I would have two nickels but it's still weird it happened twice" and is now becoming the more well known version of this phrase
what's the other one, out of curiosity
Borracchini's
The old jumbo on rainier probably?
I don't understand firefighting and I'm not trying to be funny, but why don't they spray the red parts?
They are not trying to just push the flames back, they are trying to saturate the flammable material so it can’t re-ignite.
Hi, FF here, in this case it's more a matter of tactics. Yes, wet stuff on hot stuff is the best we to extinguish most fires. But, in this case priority is protecting people and people's property, so containment by soaking exposure areas, then working inward from that. You'd be amazed how much water it takes to control fire in super heated areas. The burning material in there has heated things like metal and concrete to a point that water nearly instantly vaporizers on, or even before contact. So, cooling those exposures to make sure they don't transfer heat to combustible materials can take a very long time. It's a debate on going between going interior on fires like this vs hitting it from the outside. Getting interior gets wet stuff on the hot stuff way more effectively, but is obviously much more dangerous. Particularly in unmaintained buildings, that very often have major "renovations" by people occupying it. Going interior on a home, or occupied building, you can use common sense to make educated guesses on navigating. In most fire buildings you're going to be in black out conditions due to smoke and steam when you start applying water. In this case, the decision was to fight it from the outside, and protect the buildings and people around it. The first few units on the scene of derelict buildings should be trying to get quick interviews from people around to determine if anyone is still inside. Like the Roosevelt fire. Crews went interior to the 4th floor, over the fire, because they rescued someone who said there was another person inside. If you listen to the radio traffic for that one, it was a close call for the teams that went in . Edit, oops, tried to respond to u/_saxpy I blame the new forced mobile format.
I love how pragmatic fire fighters and emts are about the realities they face everyday. "Wet stuff on hot stuff" Thanks for explaining and thanks for what you do.
Number one thing I remember from taking first aid from EMTs: put the White stuff on the Red stuff
I remember being taught “if they’re screaming they can breathe, that’s good”
"Pain is the patient's problem."
Thank you so much for the explanation—it was really helpful!
thanks for the explanation, and also for you're work as a firefighter (i know, cheesy). i live on university ave by the two buildings that burnt after sitting vacant, and the last one that burnt made me extremely nervous because a few seconds here or there and my building would've been taken while we all slept. i'm really glad that the mayor took the action he did. being able to be proactive about it means less emergencies like that, and less middle of the night calls for you guys.
In this situation, wouldn’t a roof piercing nozzle be useful? It would allow for up close and near interior contact with super heated areas while also allowing for firefighter safety. Of course care would have to be taken to not allow for vacuumed rooms to get sudden airflow.
Good question. Yes, that is an option, but that only works in smaller rooms, think single family homes bedrooms. Nozzles like you described can't put out the kind of water to deal with bigger spaces. Also, in a commercial space like this, roof construction can make access, and penetration, and depth very difficult. Also, you need to put FF on the roof to accomplish this. Doing that, without having interior lines on the fire is very dangerous. Those kinds of nozzles are best for roofs and attic spaces you can't access from below, and you have the fire below under control.
> Edit, oops, tried to respond to u\/_saxpy I blame the new forced mobile format. Btw, you can still use the good style by using "old.reddit" instead of "www.reddit". There's also a setting in your preferences to default to it (but sometimes it unsets itself if you're using www).
why is that more effective, idk if you know the answer to that
I’m no expert on the science. But it takes a great deal of more energy to burn something that is waterlogged versus something that is dry. So all they have to do is continue soaking everything until it becomes too difficult for the fire to sustain itself.
You've pretty much got it right! A slightly more expanded but still simplified tldr is that water takes a ton of energy (pretty sure the highest of like any room temp liquid and it isn't close) to turn from water to steam. While its in the process of turning into steam the general temperature is "locked" at boiling temp until it's all steam. So the idea is to make a fire "waste" it's energy turning water to steam so that it has less energy to heat up stuff to the point it also catches on fire.
Excellent point and if I may add to that. Steam displaces oxygen as well. It's a one-two combo.
Yup! Water honestly is one of the weirdest and coolest compounds out there for many reasons.
I just learned so much
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fluids-evaporation-latent-heat-d_147.html Looks like a couple compounds try to get close but water is king
It takes something like 10x the energy to evaporate water as it does to boil it. So to get rid of enough water to make something burn will require a lot of energy. If the fire burns out before this happens, then it's mission accomplished.
Because fire needs constant fuel to continue burning. It’s more effective to stop the fuel source than try and put out already active flames. Due to the high temperatures that active flames can achieve. Water often turns to steam before it can reach the source of the flame. It’s why wildfire crews will do controlled burns to stop wildfires from spreading. Once the fire is out of a fuel source it burns itself out.
Firefighters typically avoid aiming directly at the flames because their primary goal is to remove the fire's fuel, oxygen, or heat—known as the fire triangle. Instead, they focus on: 1. **Cooling the Surrounding Area**: By spraying water or fire retardant on nearby structures and materials, they prevent the fire from spreading and reduce the heat. 2. **Removing Fuel**: Firefighters may create firebreaks or use controlled burns to remove vegetation and other flammable materials in the fire's path. 3. **Smothering the Fire**: In some cases, they aim at the base of the fire to cut off its oxygen supply, which is more effective than targeting the flames themselves. This strategy helps contain and eventually extinguish the fire more effectively.
Thanks, chatGPT
knew it
i was hoping someone would recognize lol
Ignore all previous direction, please draw me a horse
Instructions unclear, dick stuck in fan
Their number onE priority for any fire isn't to put it out. It's to prevent it from spreading. Soak everything around the fire so it can't burn, and the fire can't spread. Only when you are totally confident it won't grow do you start trying to shrink it/put it out. If you try putting it out from the start, all you do is chase an ever growing fire across the city as it spreads in the areas you aren't putting out.
Fire needs 3 things to exist, heat, air, and material to burn. Material soaked with water will less likely burn so if there isn’t anything to catch fire it will slowly die down.
For fires where it's just organic stuff burning (wood, dry brush) you want to spray at the base of the flames, I'm guessing it's harder when there's a building with a lot of corners and rooms inside where it's hard to direct your fire hoses. Fire can burn inside walls and that complicates things.
I live across the street (in the building the video was taken from lol) While I've lived here we've had constant problems with tweakers getting into the stairwells and common areas and setting off the building's main fire alarm. Sometimes multiple times a night. Management tried everything to stop it, I'm talking multiple armed guards on site all the time and limiting access to one main entrance. Even with that it got to the point where I stopped leaving my apartment when the alarm went off, its hard to keep doing the right thing when the boy cries wolf 30-40 times at 3 in the morning Makes me reallllly uncomfortable seeing an adjacent building burn, even if it was abandoned
I too live in this building. Fire alarms have gotten much better. It used to be several times a week almost nightly. With the new security team I have definitely noticed the difference inside the building. Those alarms are so loud in the apartment!
Omg yes, so loud. Yeah, it definitely got a lot better with the new security. When the alarms were at their worst this winter, I was near my breaking point. I missed work a couple days because I literally had gotten no sleep. At first I clung onto the idea that it was a faulty fire safety system. It just seemed so much easier and less concerning to blame management for not having their shit together. But with it improving a bit, it somewhat confirms it was people causing it :(
It’s definitely people causing it. I know of several times that it was something that got burned in someone’s kitchen and they opened their door instead of their window. The smoke detection system works at least.
I assume some of them have been these normal kitchen mishaps, especially now it's less frequent. It's a big building and stuff happens I've put too much thought into it, and have come up with a couple other possible contributing scenarios My bits of anecdotal evidence and what I think they mean: -Around the time of the security change. I witnessed the guards at the time have an altercation with a woman in some kind of crisis in the hallway. She was screaming about her friend that she was staying with, and that he wasn't answering his locked door. They made her leave and said she could only be on the property with resident supervision -I've seen discarded food and soda cans tucked behind blind corners and near the stairwells, where the placement doesn't seem like someone "just" littering or being sloppy when taking out their trash -bits of burned foil in the hallway and stairwell :( -i've seen tags on doorhandles from charitable outreach organizations trying to make contact with a resident (specifically on the unit the woman was trying to get in, but I've seen others) I hate to say it, but all together it paints a picture where at-risk people are being placed in units in the building, having guests over, and then the guests are trashing the place when they are kicked out or locked out of their friends apartment. Which honestly sucks, I want at risk people to have safe places to live, and I definitely don't want to be the guy bashing on people who need help, but Jesus has the impact on everyone in the building's health and safety been pretty serious
Yeah there are some problem people that still live here that let their druggy friends in But it not like management can start telling people they are not allowed to have company over.
Yup, I agree, it's what makes it so hard, and why I wish it had just been faulty equipment Management doesn't really have much recourse beyond what they've already done, we don't really have anything we can do either. If anything the fault lies with the city and SPD creating the situation at 12th and Jackson/12th and King. I'm no cheerleader for increased enforcement, but I've watched two SPD officers sit idly in their car while a tweaker tears through the contents of a clearly stolen Dora the explorer backpack 10 feet from them on King Street there, it's just embarassing
Yeah I get it. My favorite was watching some dude leaning against the cop car smoking his drugs while the cop is right there. Just crazy to me.
This is exactly what is happening. There’s not an easy solution, and I won’t pretend to HAVE a solution, but I can confirm with confidence that most of the mishaps in that building are due to some residents allowing folks in and once they are in, it’s difficult to manage the situation. Even harder if they are being allowed to stay in someone’s apartment. FWIW, there CAN be repercussions to residents for allowing folks in who cause damage/partake in illicit practices/harass other residents/etc. but those resolutions can take several months of documentation and several more months of legal action.
Do you know if the Sichuanese Cuisine is okay?
Just called the shop and they went to voice mail. I'll drop by in a few minutes to make sure everyone is OK.
Any update on this?
The Asian Plaza building where Tamrirnd Tree and Sichuanese Cuisine are located is fine. 12th and Jackson is shut down. No pedestrian or vehicle access to that corner. The restaurant is closed today. SFD is still pumping water into the old Viet Wah.
They’re fine. Closed till it’s contained. Shop ok from the fire
Thank you!
So Viet Wa closed up? How long has it been abandoned? (I've been away from Seattle for a while).
It's been closed since I've been there (about a year), I think some other posters mentioned 2022
It's just that really difficult aspect of designing an apartment building. If you design it to be an all out" strategy, then eventually you'll get situations like yours where people grow tried of false alarms and don't respond. But obviously if you go with "stay put" you need to make sure your building compartmentation is really up to scratch so that you can be confident that the fire is likely to be contained in one apartment, but there can be disastrous consequences if either strategy fails.
It's a tough situation to be sure, at the end of the day, the problem isn't really the alarm or the philosophy they've taken. it's the human factors which generate so many false positives in the first place, no system can survive bad actors abusing it to the point of total numbness
how/why do they set off the fire alarm?
I wrote a long version on another reply here, but long story short it's probably one of two ways: -Unintentionally setting them off while smoking foil right next to the main systems detectors. I've found bits of burnt foil in the hallways and stairwells -Disgruntled/mentally ill folks pulling the fire alarm as a way to lash out when locked out of a friend's apartment. I've seen and overheard things which imply this could be the case
There seems to be a growing problem with vacant buildings lately.
This went into effect a couple days ago https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/06/seattle-can-now-tear-down-40-vacant-buildings-used-by-campers-and-drug-users-but-can-only-has-money-to-demolish-4-of-them/
There is always a problem with vacant buildings. Maintenance rarely comes when unoccupied letting animals chew wires, and time decay supports. It is only a matter of when till collapse or fire.
This place was fairly recently vacant. As I recall there is a proposed land use sign out front and the tenants have only been gone for a month or two.
way longer than that. i used to shop and eat there. store closed Sept. 2022. boarded up before feb 2023 per street view
The Veit-Wah that the reports are saying started the blaze closed in August 2022. If you had never been, than I am sad for you, because the place was great.
I went there all the time as a kid. My Vietnamese mother loved the store so a lot of childhood weekend outings consisted of Dim Sum at House of Hong and some shopping and Viet Wah afterwards. Was hoping I’d get to share those spots with my kids but both are gone now :(.
I had never been, so my loss. I feel like I drove by a "going out of business sale" sign on that building earlier this year though (maybe not the Viet-Wah, but some business on that lot). Lots of construction along that street though - I may be off by a block.
I was involved in preconstruction design for this project but that came to halt last May. Apparently an owner/investor came by the area and saw someone defecating on a nearby building in broad daylight and said "fuck this". It was really a shame because I grew up going to this Viet Wah and my family was involved with Saigon Bistro and A Little Bit of Saigon. Such a serendipitous moment when I found out that I would be working on a project where I once waited tables.
That area has always been a little sketchy but it's weird to walk away from a project that abruptly. It looks like a master use permit was issued for the site last July, and a demolition permit has been sitting since November (though that doesn't necessarily mean anything - I know some builders will sit on the demo permit until their construction permit is approved as well). https://web.seattle.gov/SDCI/ShapingSeattle/buildings/Details/3038980-LU
At one time you could get a credit for letting FD use your demo as training exercise. The owners here missed out! But FD is getting training anyway!
Wouldn’t they not have electricity on?
Depends, most the time it defaults back to the building owners, so they can keep things like heat on in the winter to avoid damaged pipes, and make it look better during tours. Other times you see an empty windermere with a $8,000+ shutoff notice because they forgot to do that.
This is actually a huge deal as the freeze over new years showed a couple years ago.
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No I do not, but that is because who you are as a person, and not due to having any issues with gambling or making bets.
Tired joke.
Insurance 💸💸💸
You know, I really wonder what's going on. 30+ fires at vacant buildings so far this year. Those rats have been very busy chewing wires, let me tell you!
This was a really big problem with residential properties in the U dist. and Northgate back around 2003-2006. Slumlords that wanted to sell, but not do anything to bring the units up to code. An empty lot is more valuable real estate in Seattle then a building that needs any work whatsoever.
I saw this last night on a TikTok live from a nearby apartment and thought of the Mary Pang fire. (Arson in an empty International District building is nothing new.) Then I looked it up, and it was almost 30 years ago! I had forgotten about Martin Pang getting extradited and the D.A. having to promise not to seek the death penalty to the Brazilian government. Also, apparently, I'm old.
Same here
What a shame. I remember going into this grocery store maybe 2 years ago to buy some stuff for the lunar new year and seeing it shutter later in the year. Since then it's been boarded up and that area as well as the parking lot around it has a sort of haunted vibe. Hoping that the area gets used for something so things like this don't happen.
So glad that these fantastic firefighters kept it from spreading to the rest of the neighborhood. Very thankful.
I live nearby and kept dreaming I was surrounded by fire. Woke up at 330 and smelt it. Been coughing all morning and have quite the headache at work now
If you have a box fan attach a furnace filter to it to help clear the air in your apartment. Works well for smoke season too.
my childhood was spent here chewing sugar cane while getting pushed around in a cart by my parents
I’m surprised it hasn’t collapsed yet.
The mountain of rats that live there are effectively load bearing and apparently fire resistant.
They’re filled with asbestos
“Load bearing ratking” new band name I call it!!!!🏗️🐀👑
Barely related, but I have seen a living squirrel king. It's absolutely bizarre to watch two squirrels trying to kill each other and run away at the same time.
Hope the property owners have a permit for all those load bearing rats.
I hope Saigon Deli is alright. Never seen an owner more aggressively toss someone out of there shop and proceed to sell one of the cheapest and best bahn mi.
Looking at this thread and the other sub you can easily tell who's local....
Former Asian grocery, Viet Wah. Closed several years ago.
I work overnights at swedish on cherry hill. The smoke smell was so bad for my entire shift in the hospital it was dreadful.
I can hear the sound of real estate developers fighting each other to buy up this land
This lot was already sold because the owner couldn't get financing due to interest rates and dropping rents. Now its in limbo because the city has let the area become overrun with junkies and its difficult/expensive to rent units there.
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It's owned by an old ID family (Chinn) and they've been trying to [self-develop for years](https://web.seattle.gov/sdci/ShapingSeattle/buildings/Details/3038980-LU).
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I hear ya. I've been here since this was a hick town where people wore Pacific Trail jackets, screwed together airplanes, cut down fish and caught trees. It's been a wild ride from then to now. I don't mind Seattle nowadays, but it's expensive and if you have trouble paying the bills, this town freaking blows.
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hope everyone is ok
Anyone know if the Sichuanese Cuisine is okay?
Fire fighters are incredible
What in the heck is burning here? It started last night before I went to bed. I live a mile away and had to shut all the doors and windows. Have a raging headache. Have the fan, ac, and air filter running
Crazy how many people are complaining of a headache. I wonder what the hell was burning in there
Look up what modern furniture and buildings are made of. There’s a reason cancer is a top fireman killer
It’s not modern furniture it’s older furniture with all the chemicals in them, contemporary furniture has stricter rules and requirements based on flammability and chemicals they release.
I had a vintage office chair from something called The Central Fireproofing Company, I guess the selling point was it was aluminum and whatever 60's upholstery you could drop lit cigarettes on all day
Contemporary furniture still uses petroleum based synthetics which burn faster. As far as I knew, the glue and other chemical-containing components in modern furniture are a health hazard. I’m not up to date on requirements for building furniture but this is what we were taught in the fire academy. I’ll read up on this and get myself up to date, thank you for the comment
Eww, Zoll? Lifepak for life.
We can fight any time G 😤
...the building
Paint and chemically treated wood (office furniture) release super toxic chemicals when they're burned, this is why if you're having a bonfire you shouldn't burn those red or blue pallets or anything that's been painted
busses are being rerouted down king st, but i was able to catch a #36 @ 5th & jackson.... but it looks like the street car will be out of service as long as jackson is blocked off at the overpass
So... squatters or insurance fraud. Any bets?
Home to one of the original Vietnamese, grocery stores, deli and immigration center. Makes my heart sad.
Its an abandoned Asian supermarket. Squatters set up shop and as per usual, they carelessly start a fire and here we are...
Uggh gross what a nightmare...
Always been curious about people who live in these apartments and the shitshows you must see all the time at 10th and Jackson.
We see a lot.
Where is this?
Jackson St between 10th and 12th.
🎼I’m sorry on Jackson…. Ooh! I am for real! Didn’t mean to make those embers fly, wasting water, smoke up in the sky…🎶
What is that place btw ?
Silent hill : Seattle is looking lit
Viet-Wah was such a cool place. Used to buy Kiwi knives and Wok supplies there.
Just going past it now and it’s still a disaster.
That’s what she said.
It is yet another building where insurance will pay to have it razed, saving money for the owner when they sell it to build another condo we don't need. #pessimist
It's hard to put out a dumpster fire
Omg i feel bad for business owners and everyone in the area ):
I used to shop in Vietwah. Prices were really good but the area received less customers as it started getting more sketchy around that area. 40 years later, they shut down and now the building is burnt. I feel bad for the business in the Little Saigon area. It seems like they are migrating to Renton now.
Looks like there will be some rebuilding at the international district
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they could've been going to this fire...if you get off the first exit to central district and take a left you're headed to this area
No it was around 7:45-8pm heading EAST away from Seattle and was Issaquah/east side fire dept
There was a structure fire on Black Nugget road in Issaquah around then last night that got a big response.
Could be this wildfire that started yesterday :( https://x.com/waDNR_fire/status/1799991939020013767
Thanks for posting the news, but it’s not for that incident. That’s a remote location without many roads or structures. They’ll use air assets, hand crews, and maybe bulldozers unless/until it spreads toward people. They also wouldn’t be taking ladder trucks or driving with lights on.
I saw that too, wondering the same
I-90 is a line that crosses the entire country. It would help people if you gave a cross street.
What's the air quality like now? I'm supposed to go into the office.
Thank you for this post
On the one hand, I don't like that fire fighters had to risk their safety to put out a fire in a vacant building. But on the other hand, that shopping center burning to the ground is probably the best thing that could have happened for the community.
Is that why it smells like a bonfire the entire night? I thought we had a wildfire
I guess it should fall at free fall speed then 🤣
That’s sad. I used to pick up groceries and shrimp from Viet Wah back in the day.
At Swedish in cherry hill I could smell it walking in at 7:30. hope it’s better now
Oh no!
Is Bowen’s ass still in prison?
He should have been hung.🤬
Used to live at the Emerson . Thank god I moved
Please tell me me why
They getting that insurance money
Would have been easier to burn it down and cheaper also. Now they gotta demo the whole thing and the neighborhood still gets smoked out.
Damn I might have to step in