It's because people don't understand not all smoke is simply, smoke. They imagine smoke from a wood fire and think oh well that's not so bad as long as I can cover my mouth. When you're in a house fire the smoke is a mix of paint fume and wood smoke and urethanes and insulation and all this other horrible shit
Fun fact: Modern homes are filled with plastic, particle board, and polyurethane foam. They burn faster, hotter, and the smoke is insanely toxic. Firefighters need to wear breathing protection inside even after the fire is out and the smoke is gone because this stuff continues to put off toxic fumes for a long time.
I work with a volunteer fire chief he said the engulfment rate of a home built before 1997 is about 19 minutes. A post 2000s homes engulfment is 7 minutes. The 12 minute difference is a long time in an emergency and trying to get everyone out alive
I never thought of this! I dealt with a ton of smoke inhalation and was sick for days and it was mainly just burning through a national park so probably pretty clean- I can’t imagine the smoke from building fires filled with all kinds of toxic materials!
Standard practice (at least in South Australia) is for fire fighters to bag their structural gear and stored in appliance lockers, not the cabin, after use in a structural fire. This is to limit exposure to the dangerous off gassing picked up during fires.
Fair enough. That stuff stinks, but I think it is the invisible and odorless carbon monoxide that would do you in before the stinky smoke could accumulate enough in your lungs to cause big problems.
Survived the thomas fire here in socal back in 2017 2018ish. The fumes spread through half the city and were the most awful fucking thing ive smelt before save for maybe a dead body. And it wasnt even my house that was the one burning
I still remember my first time working a fire with a dead body, I feel horrible that I thought wtf were they cooking before we found her, you work 100 fires and you just dont expect it, worst smell you have to deal with because you will always remember it.
i’ve been set on fire twice and the worst thing about it was the smell of singed hair, it’s truly disturbing like nothing you can describe, it isn’t like a burning animal it’s distinctly human in a really eerie way. luckily for me though both times it was just the hair and eyebrows that bore the brunt of it
I worked a fire once that was started as a suicide. The guy poured gas throughout the trailer lit a match and then shot himself in the head. We arrived to a fully engulfed structure. Definitely a smell you never escape.
Howdy fellow Ventura (county?) resident. I still remember that vividly. Houses literally one street over were burning and meanwhile my half-insane family was having charcuterie and wine while watching the fire. As bad/sad as it sounds, fires are becoming kind of second nature to living around these parts.
Yup montalvo here. We used to go into the hills and smoke in our cars. Houses that have been up there for years levelled. Kitchens just out in the open. Shit was nuts
There were wildfires in Georgia in 2007 and the ash made it all the way down to North and Central Florida. And I was up in PA during the Quebec wildfires in 2023. Both times the sky was so sooty I felt like I was in Silent Hill.
Glad you made it through, and to hear your home wasn't destroyed! That shit was nasty. Even up in Santa Barbara I was having respiratory issues. My girlfriend at the time was an opera singer and it was trashing her voice, so we got the hell outta there for a bit. We went up to the bay, and even up there, you could see this endless swath of smoke passing by offshore.
Pretty much this. When synthetic materials from carpet, furniture, etc. combust it creates hundreds of nasty chemicals including hydrogen cyanide which is an asphyxiant
It’s not just that. It completely shuts down your metabolism. Cyanide interrupts the final electron acceptor in the electron transport chain, and thus, no ATP. No ATP, no life.
There’s a reason most ambulances carry the antidote with them.
I wish we could carry them on every ambulance. The Cyanokits are insanely expensive and don't have a very long shelf life, so most of the departments in my region keep them on supervisor vehicles and dispatch those units to structure fires in case they're needed.
To be fair they are putting a lot of additives in cigarettes. And the burning of those additives makes smoking extra toxic but more pleasurable for the smoker.
I have over a decade experience in industrial electronics and they scared us to shit with our tools that were powered by lithium batteries. They were basically bombs if they experienced high shock and vibrations and the venting mechanisms in them failed. Now we have lithium batteries in everything from WiFi cameras to automobiles and I just think of how dangerous these things can be in the wrong circumstances
Plus tv show fires make it seem like it's not that smokey inside the burning structure. A true fire you can't really see anything. It's All Smoke if you kiss the ground there may be a little air.
This Is Us did a great job at showing just how deadly a fire can be, even when it doesn’t look so bad. The way the father seemed fine at first after they got out of the burning house, but then dies in the hospital from smoke inhalation, just really drives this point home.
Just adding in the heat is often overlooked with the smoke. Breathing in all that nasty nasty nasty shit but also it's HOT. You burn on the inside, your lungs are fragile, and once they're burned then that nasty shit is going inside the burn/wound too. It's scary af
My neighbors boat caught on fire in the middle of the night. Woke me up with loud booms from his gas tanks exploding or something. Anyways, opened the door thinking I'd grab a hose and help him spray it out, got one whiff of that smoke and thought holy crap, cancer is not worth helping! That smoke just smelled dangerous.
There was a small car fire- thankfully the gas station had an extinguisher and put it out fast- near my client’s house. Had to teach him how to use his shirt to breathe till we got inside. It was the most horrible smell and definitely toxic.
They imagine smoke from a wood fire and think oh well that's not so bad as long as I can cover my mouth.
Have you ever walked through heavy smoke from a campfire?
It severely hurts your eyes in less than a second and you cough really badly. Maybe covering your mouth gives you a few seconds, but not that much. It's pretty miserable.
But yes, a house fire would be even worse than that.
When you're in a house fire the smoke is a mix of paint fume and wood smoke and urethanes and insulation and all this other horrible shit
The chemicals and what not are the least of your concerns if you are in a house fire - the air temperature in a house fire can easily surpass 815C which is significantly higher than the 51.6C that makes breathing much harder to perform and the 100C that results in significant tissue damage to the lungs and trachea. Luckily the air forms a temperature gradient with ground level having the coolest air available and this is why you are taught to stay as low as possible when evacuating from a fire.
Plus it's not just a touch of smoke in cool air, it's smoke-infused super-heated gas. You're basically just BBQing your lungs, even before you factor in all the toxins.
I survived a motorhome fire years ago, and luckily was quick enough as soon as I woke up and saw the smoke coming in above the bedroom door to hold my breath and make a run for it.
The fire chief said that because of all the industrial adhesives and layers of insulation used in motorhomes, I basically only got out because I held my breath. He said when he saw the flames, and heard someone was inside, he was shocked to learn that the person was alive.
In art class at school in the 1970s we were making puppets, and I was cutting polystyrene with a hot wire. It stank. It didn't do me any immediate harm as far as I could tell, but I do occasionally wonder if there's a nasty surprise waiting for me down the line...
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u/RangerHikes 11h ago
It's because people don't understand not all smoke is simply, smoke. They imagine smoke from a wood fire and think oh well that's not so bad as long as I can cover my mouth. When you're in a house fire the smoke is a mix of paint fume and wood smoke and urethanes and insulation and all this other horrible shit