Driving Through Fire?

zman308

zman308

Joined
Sep 3, 2007
Messages
831
On CNN this morning they interviewed a couple who had to evacuate their Malibu home very quickly. They left in two cars and the fire was raging on both side of the road. They had to make a run through it. The man and his son were in their "Jag" and when they started to drive through it, the car stalled. They did manage to get out. Any ideas on this. Heat, smoke? Can anything like this cause the car to stall? The women and the other son made it through, but their car was on fire under the hood and they had to abandon it before it burned up. This would apply to bugging out because of a forest or brush fire.
 
well since cars are nothing more than movable computers now i can see how this could happen, the smoke and lack of O2 could have messed up a sensor or just the intense heat could have roasted something important
 
Here's my guess...Car engines require a source of oxygen for ignition. A forest fire uses up the surrounding oxygen as fuel. In the midst of a fire there would be little or no oxygen to support ignition in the engine.
 
If there was alot of ash it the air it could plug the air filter reducing the air supply to the intake manifold. There are also various sensors on the engine that could have shut the engine off if they were getting to hot. It could also be that they driver was scared and flooded, overheated, mis-shifted or something that was totally unrealated to the fire.
 
They said that they had no visability and had to drive blind for a few seconds. They knew the road so that was no problem. The smoke was probably very heavy, the temperature very hot and there was probably some sort of wind draft occuring.
 
Lots of soft parts under a car hood too, things that would melt before the occupants were in danger from the heat. Wiring insulation, pressure lines, etc.

Or it could just be that their 'jag' was an older model, and they out-drove the car's DBB (Distance Between Breakdowns).
 
Hey, it's a Jag. Since when did anyone expect reliability out of those things? :D

The news reports are talking about how the fire fighters have been hindered by the people in Malibu who refused to evacuate until the very last minute. Now the fire fighters are spending all their time trying to get people to safety instead of trying to, you know, actually stop the fire.

No doubt all those people who evacuated late will go on to sue the fire fighters because they weren't able to save the houses. :mad:

I don't know where I read this (it was here on BF somewhere), but it's so true: The older I get, the more I realize there's just too many people in the world...
 
Why would any sane person want to wait until the last sec. to evacuate?

If it were me, and I knew of a possible disaster ahead of time, I would be packing as soon as I heard it was possible it might get to my house. T

he sooner I start evacuating the more of my sh*t I can save.

If I new even 2 days before it got to my house, there would be nothing but bear walls by the time the disaster got to my place. Of course I live in a small apartment and not a multi million dollar home, but at least they would be able to get there most valuable stuff out.
 
stingray4540 said:
Why would any sane person want to wait until the last sec. to evacuate?
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They let their possessions own them -- that's part of it, I think.

Also, the idea that the fire can't be stopped is probably hard for a lot of people to get their head around. They don't evacuate because they don't recognize the danger they're in until it's too late.

People in some parts of the United States are way too far removed from nature's harshest realities. This is why they insist on building in flood plains and places like that. They believe humanity can beat nature.

Like I said, way too many people in the world....
 
I don't know where I read this (it was here on BF somewhere), but it's so true: The older I get, the more I realize there's just too many people in the world...
Click to expand...
There are 300,000,000 Americans. I figure at least a third of them could completely disappear, and no one would miss them but their mothers.

Now we have the mayor of Atlanta wants to stop the flow of water down a major river, threatening the natural river ecosystem including endagered species. And all because Atlanta's population has grown to over 5 million people, an increase of 900,000 since only 2000. Well I visited Atlanta around 2000, and it was a congested mess of suburban sprawl even then. I am ~certain~ Atlanta did not need hundreds-of-thousands of more people...

What'll happen to Atlanta, same as California and other places facing resource shortages, they'll squeek by this one emergency, then continue the exact same growth patterns that got them there in the first place.
 
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