California Fire and Life (5 page)

First thing Jack learns in fire school is, What is fire?

Nothing like starting with the basics.

So …

“Fire is the active stage of combustion,” the professor tells Jack’s class. “Combustion is the oxidation of fuel that creates flame, heat and light.”

“So combustion is flame, heat and light?” Jack says.

The professor agrees, then asks, “But what is flame?”

The class’s reaction is basically,
Duhh
.

It’s easy to
describe
flame—it’s red, yellow, orange, occasionally blue—but defining it is something else. Fuller lets the class sit with this for a minute, then he asks a very unprofessorlike question: “Are you telling me that no silly bastard in this room has ever lighted a fart?”

Ahhh, says the class.

Ahhh, thinks Jack. Flame is burning gas.

“Burning
gases
,” Fuller says. “So combustion is the oxidation of fuel that creates burning gases, heat and light. Which begs what question?”

“What is oxidation?” Jack asks.

“Full marks for the surfer dude,” Fuller says. “What’s your name?”

“Jack Wade.”

“Well, Master Jack,” Fuller says, “oxidation is a series of chemical reactions that occur when an atom—that is,
matter
—forms a chemical bond with a molecule of oxygen. Now don’t you all wish you’d paid more attention in Chemistry 101?”

Yes, thinks Jack. Definitely. Because Fuller starts drawing chemical equations on the board. While the chalk is screeching, Fuller’s saying, “In order for oxidation to occur, a combustible fuel—we’ll talk about fuel in a few minutes—and oxygen must come together. This is called an exothermic—that is, heat-producing—reaction.”

He draws an equation : 2H
₂
+ O
₂
= 2H
₂
O + heat.

“A basic oxidation reaction,” Fuller says. “When you combine hydrogen and oxygen, you get two molecules of water, and heat. Heat is measured in BTUs—British thermal units. One BTU is the amount of heat
that it takes to raise the temperature of one pound of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit. So the more heat you have, the greater the temperature you’re going to get. Put simply, the more BTUs, the hotter the fire.”

Fuller continues, “Look, gentlemen, to sustain a fire you need to have three things working together: oxygen, fuel and heat. If you have no oxygen, oxidation obviously can’t take place—no fire. If you have no fuel, there is nothing to oxidize—no fire. If the fuel doesn’t contain enough mass of heat, then the fire dies out.”

He strikes a match.

“Observe,” he says. “We have oxygen, we have fuel, we have heat.”

The match burns for a few seconds, then goes out.

“What happened?” Fuller asks. “We had plenty of oxygen, but not a lot of fuel and not a lot of heat.”

He strikes another match.

“I will now attempt to burn down the classroom.”

He holds the match to the metal desk.

The flame makes a slight scorch on the metal, then burns out.

“What happened?” Fuller asks. “We have oxygen, we have heat, it’s a big desk—plenty of fuel—where is our sustained fire?”

“Most metals don’t burn easily,” Jack says.

“Most metals don’t burn easily,” Fuller repeats. “Which is the lay person’s way of talking about flammability. Some substances burn more easily than others. Witness …”

He rips a page from a legal pad, strikes another match and holds the match to the paper.

“It
ignites
immediately,” he says. He drops the burning paper into a metal trash can and puts a lid on it.

“Thereby depriving it of oxygen,” he notes. “Look, paper has a lower
flash point
than the metal of the desk. Flash point is the temperature at which a fuel ignites. A simple match will ignite paper but doesn’t have nearly the BTUs to create enough temperature to reach the flash point of the metal in this desk. It simply can’t sustain the oxidation reaction needed to set the desk on fire and keep it on fire.

“Now, were we to add more fuel to the fire, and developed enough BTUs to raise the temperature, there is a point at which we could indeed melt the desk.

“It’s a chain reaction, gentlemen—a chemical chain reaction. Difficult to break down into a description because it is a never-ending cycle of chain reactions which are really quite fascinating in detail. But for
practical purposes it’s all about fuel. The amount of fuel, the flash points of that fuel and the conductivity of that fuel.

“So, the amount of fuel—in proper terminology the fuel
load
, or the fuel
mass
. Why is it important to establish a fuel load for a structure that has suffered a fire? If, for instance, you find a melted metal desk in a burned structure where the pre-fire fuel load could not have produced sufficient BTUs to melt that metal, you have an anomaly which you need to resolve.

“You’ll want to be taking notes on this because you’ll need this terminology to pass the bloody test.”

Jack takes notes.

He doesn’t want to pass the bloody test.

He wants to ace it.

So he has to learn certain definitions.

Like fuel load.

Fuel load is the total potential BTUs per square foot of the structure in question. You calculate it by determining the total pounds of matter in the structure and multiplying the total weight by the total BTUs of the various materials in the structure—8,000 BTUs per pound of wood, 16,000 BTUs per pound of plastic, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

Certain materials give off more heat than others. Wood, about 8,000 BTUs. Coal, about 12,000. Flammable liquids, somewhere between 16,000 to 21,000 BTUs.

Another term: heat release rate. This is the speed at which a fire grows, depending on the fuel upon which it is feeding. Some materials burn fast and hot, others are slow. HRR is measured in BTUs per second, otherwise known as kilowatts. A plastic trash bag, filled with the usual garbage, is going to have somewhere between 140 and 350 kilowatts. A television set about 250. A two-square-foot pool of kerosene, 400. Kerosene gives you a hot, fast fire.

Jack learns that fuel load isn’t just fuel load, but is divided into two parts: dead load and live load. Dead load is the total weight of the materials in the structure plus the total weight of any permanent built-ins.
Live load is the total weight of the materials of items added to the structure—furniture, appliances, artwork, toys, people and pets. The irony of the phrase “live load” is that if they are found in the fire, they are most likely dead.

Conductivity—that is to say, the amount of heat a substance on fire transfers. Some materials retain most of their heat; some transfer it to other materials in the structure. Jack learns for a fire to spread it has to encounter material that is conductive, that transfers and adds to the BTUs. Paper, for example, is highly conductive. Water isn’t—it absorbs more heat than it transfers. Air is highly conductive, being made up of about 21 percent oxygen. So most structural fires spread by convection, meaning the transfer of heat by a circulating medium, usually air. Fire burns up, because that’s where the air is.

“It’s all about fuel,” Fuller lectures. “You are what you eat, and fire is no different. You can determine its severity, its origin, its direction and rate of spread, and how long it burned, by the fuel in the structure.”

Jack aces the chemistry test.

Fuller passes out the results, which apparently launch him to new rhetorical heights.

“So,” he asks, “what happens in a fire?

“It has all the dramatic structure of your classic three-act play, gentlemen. It has the rhythm of a love affair.

“Oxidation occurs. Act One: The Smoldering Phase. The seduction, if you will, the chemical reaction between oxygen and solid molecules in which the oxygen tries to induce heat in the solid matter. The seduction might take a fraction of a second—in the case of a hot number like gasoline or kerosene or some other liquid accelerant, the roundheels of the flammable street corner, I might tell you. Switching metaphors, liquid accelerants are the aphrodisiacs of the fire seduction. They are the storied Spanish fly, the fine wine, the manly cologne, the American Express Platinum Card left casually by the side of the couch. They can get the passion ignited in a big hurry.

“Or the smoldering phase might last hours or even days. The material, the fuel, wants to be wined and dined, courted, taken to dinner and the movies. Come to Sunday dinner and meet my parents. But fire is a patient seducer, comrades. If it can just hang in there long enough to generate a little heat, if the affair is given a little air to breathe, it lingers. A kiss on the neck, a hand under the blouse, the steamy heat of the backseat at a drive-in movie, fellows. Working, working, trying to melt the fuel to liquid and then into burning gas. A questing hand under the
skirt, trying to generate enough heat to reach the ignition point, smoldering, smoldering and then …

“Ignition. Act Two: The Free-Burning Phase. The flash point is reached. Open flames, my boys. Passion. Heated gas is lighter than air so it rises—witness your Goodyear blimp. It starts eating up the air and then it hits the ceiling. If the fire is hot enough to ignite the ceiling materials you have more ignition. The fire might even blast a hole in the roof to get to that easy, tasty air. The heated gases themselves become a source of radiation, now spreading the heat downward to ignite material below. This is why the ceiling might burn, by the way, before the furniture does.

“It all depends on your fuel, gentlemen. Is she an ice maiden with a high flash point and a tepid HRR? The affair will die from lack of passion. She’s a frigid bitch, my jolly boys—do your worst, she won’t respond. Or is she a hot number? A low flash point, a steaming HRR? Then hold on, buckoes, you are in for a ride. If she’s hot enough and big enough, your fire will reach a critical temperature. The heat will radiate down from the ceiling hot enough to overwhelm the ignition point of all the materials underneath it, and then the fairies start flying.

“What do I mean by that esoteric and somewhat effeminate reference regarding flying fairies? Just before flashover, boys, you might see little pockets of gas in the air ignite—little licks of flame dancing in the air. That is the ‘fairies flying,’ and that is the time to put it in Reverse, gentlemen, because if you see the fairies flying, it is a prelude to—

“WHOOSH! Act Three: The Flashover Phase. All the exposed surfaces reach ignition point, and now you have an out-of-control fire. An undeniable passion that sweeps everything before it. Nothing can resist it, every substance opens its legs and joins the orgy. The heat is transferred upward by the air, downward by radiation and sideways by conduction. It thrashes in passion in all directions. The intensity
doubles
with each 18-degree rise in temp. It gets hotter and faster, faster and hotter. This is fire’s orgasm, gentlemen, the fiery consummation of the affair. It roars and screams and groans and moans. It howls like a banshee into the air. It burns until it runs out of fuel or someone comes along and puts it out.

“And now,” Fuller says, “we shall have a cigarette.”

He lights his cig and leans back against the desk in a parody of sexual satisfaction and exhaustion. After a minute he says, “Three phases of fire, ye thirsters after knowledge: smoldering, free burning and flashover. The first act often dies from its own lack of energy, it suffocates from lack
of air; the second phase can be put out by prompt and appropriate action; the third phase, flashover—well, Katie, bar the door.

“So what is fire? A dry chemical interaction between molecules. A three-act drama that often ends in tragedy. A metaphor for sex, which reveals itself in our language of love, i.e., the ‘heat of passion’: ‘You get me so hot, baby.’ The stereotypical seduction setting of the bearskin rug in front of a roaring fire. The heat that can only be extinguished by the emission of cooling exothermic fluids.

“This is the chemistry that old Prometheus instinctively understood,” Fuller says. “He gave it to man and man has used it to warm his caves, to cook his food and—being human—to incinerate his fellow man in all manner of nasty combustion.

“Well, let the sparks fly. Let the eagles feast.”

He finishes his cigarette, tosses it into the trash can, then says, “Let’s go dance with the bitch.”

Dance with the bitch?

The crazy bastard puts them into a burning building.

Jack loves it.

Fire school—
outrageous
, man.

The little Irish dude walks them out onto this big concrete square where there’s this two-story concrete building that looks like an air control tower designed by some sort of Soviet architectural committee. Thing’s got doors and windows and fire escapes all over it and there’s firemen standing around looking at the students like they are meat.

Firemen have these little smirks on their faces, like
good morning, welcome to our world. Welcome to your hosing
.

Firemen standing in front of a stack of oxygen masks.

Which makes the students a little, you know,
apprehensive
, then one of the older firemen comes up and starts giving them a briefing about how to put on the masks and how to use them.

Five minutes later Jack is standing in a crowded mass of his fellow students on the second floor of the concrete building, and it’s hot and sweaty and then it’s pitch black because the door slams. Some of the
boys start scrambling to put their masks on, but a voice comes over the PA screaming,
Not yet!!!!

There’s something we want you to experience first, gentlemen.

Suffocation.

More properly, asphyxiation.

First thing Jack feels is like this intense heat, then the room starts filling with smoke. Jack’s like,
This is wild
, and wild it is because what you got here is a bunch of men crowded into a dark locked room, part of which is on fire.

Jack gets the game.

The game is, you put your mask on before the order comes, you are
out of there
—out of the building, out of the school—so Jack squats down as close as he can manage to the floor, where there’s still some air. But it’s only a minute or so before his eyes start burning and tearing, and then he starts choking and gagging, and everyone is choking and gagging, and Jack feels this moment of absolute primal terror—which is like
panic
, man. He feels it and appreciates it—this is what they
want
me to feel, this is the moment they want me to confront. Want me to give in, freak out, lose it.