Just learned about the Kaprun disaster in which 155 people lost their lives when an underground train caught fire.
There were only 12 survivors all of whom followed the advice of a retired firefighter who advised them to run downhill through the flames in the rear of the train.
The steep incline of the tunnel acted as a blast furnace that sucked in fresh air from the low end and funneled toxic smoke to the high end.
Not sure how applicable this will be to anyone here, but I thought it a great example of how a little more widespread knowledge of how fire works could have saved a lot of lives.
Tl;dr fire bad but smoke worse. Get to fresh air.
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The key part of fire behavior to understand here is how exactly a fire goes about consuming oxygen and exhausting heat and smoke in an enclosed space.
Fire will always need to pull oxygen in, and push heat and smoke out. Oxygen and the cooler air it makes up will always be pulled in on a lower plane than the heat and smoke it pushes out, which as many people know rises. The way this affects the space you’re in and therefore where you want to be (Besides you know, out) is dependent on how many openings to the outside space there are and where they’re located.
If there are two or more openings to the outside space at different elevations, the fire will pull the cool oxygenated air in the lower opening, and push the heat and smoke out the upper opening. This is known as the chimney affect, and as you may have guessed from the name is how fireplaces work. This is why you can have a fire inside your home without dying from smoke inhalation, all the smoke and a lot of the heat is going straight up and out of the chimney, as the fire pulls oxygen in from your living room. This creates a negative pressure in your living space that prevents the smoke from emptying into it, and you just keep the horizontal radiant heat.
If there is just one opening, the fire will have to share that opening between those two functions. The lower half of that opening will be pulling cool air in, and the upper half will be pushing heat and smoke out. If you saw this in person you can actually see the exact line between these two things happening which is called the neutral plane, and you want to stay below it at all times.
There is however a danger here, which is that a single opening like this, often a set of basement stairs in a house fire where the fire is in the basement, allows access down to where the fire is by firefighters, provided they stay below that neutral plane, but only as long as that remains the only opening. Firefighters can and have died fighting their way down basement stairs meanwhile a small basement window below grade is broken either by the pressure generated by the fire or even a fellow firefighter breaking it for ventilation without due regard for the firefighters inside. This turns that window into the point the cool air comes in and the neutral plane on the stairs disappears and the entire staircase becomes a chimney of superheated air and smoke top to bottom, likely killing anyone who remains on the stairs.
Perhaps worth pointing out that the 12 who survived did not run into the fire. They broke a window and went downwards past the fire. From Wikipedia:
Twelve people from the rear of the train broke a window with a ski pole and, advised by an escapee who had been a volunteer fire fighter, escaped downwards past the fire and below the smoke.
followed the advice of a retired firefighter
The actual YSK.
am current firefighter. follow my directions but don’t follow my lead. odds are i’m nerding out and looking for the fire.
To be fair, do they carry around any sort of badge? Could have seemed like a crazy person to- oh it was in Austria, not New York
Regular guy seeing fire: “this is my chance to lie about being a firefighter”
I doubt that happens often.
Tweakers and the mentally infirm. There is also a type of character who just compulsively lies about things, especially in the worst situation.
I can see why some people wouod be unwilling to trust the advice of “run towards the fire,” regardless. Maybe the firefighter took the time to explain the ohysics briefly, in which case we have 12 survivors who understood the physics (thus could trust him) and a couple dozen or so who were less physics literate. Science saves lives!
I’ve known compulsive liars . They aren’t good at lying during emergencies. When people panic they have a hard time opening up doors without instructions. People don’t make up lies on those situations. Atleast it’s very unlikely. Tweaked or not.
As for mental illness I guess if the person already believes themselves to be a fire fighter because of mental illnesses they might continue that belief on a fire. But again that has to be pretty rare.
“I’m a retired firefighter! Quick, everyone eat your Metro cards!”
“i’m a retired metro driver. everyone strip down and grab a handful of this petroleum jelly!”
Direction to go in case of a public transit fire is probably highly context dependent. The real lesson here is to follow instructions of trained emergency response personnel
The real lesson here is to follow instructions of trained emergency response personnel
We just went through CoViD, like a week ago (a week, right? It also feels like a million years, so I’m not sure). We found that, largely, MANY people didn’t follow the sane, simple advice to lessen the load on trauma centers – “Do like a billion people in china do every day, and wear a thing on your face”. And the defiance-as-religion types didn’t die fast enough.
NO ONE’s gonna listen to an authority on this either. I’d want them all to run into the zombie horde and stare them down or something like hillbilly tough guys, but I need someone to farm the bran in my good, good, whole-wheat shreddies.
a very shitty Team sport
I’d never taken the time to realise firefighters have to learn about physics-nonsense for their line of work. On top of having to stay really fit? That’s tough
That guy would have evaluated the size of the fire, the progression of fire over 30s, 1min, and 2min, danger levels from direct-flame, radiant-heat, and smoke-inhalation, effects on structure, in about a second.
Determined the best course of action was to get below the fire, in another second.
Fire travels faster uphill, smoke fills available space from top down.
Most people understand fire in a controlled situation, such as campfires, hearths, or bonfires.
If someone seems to understand what that uncontrolled fire is going to do, listen to them.
Yep. Covid ruined my belief in sanity. If it were a zombie apocalypse there would be people saying “I have a right to be eaten by zombies!” While they just end up making many more zombies.
It would be fine if they asserted their right to get eaten by zombies. The problem is that they decide they have the right to let a zombie loose in middle of the haven.
So it’s really about getting under the fire, even if that means going through it first.
I mean you don’t want to go through it, that will just kill you. But staying below the heat and smoke it’s generating is always a good idea.
Specifically, you want to be up wind of the fire, and it the fire is creating that wind in an inclined tunnel that might involve heading down, through the fire. Funicular railways and stairwells could both be places that’s necessary.
No. Structures on fire tend to collapse, and then you have fire falling onto you. That sounds like a bad idea.
Actually yes. The thing is that falling onto the fire isn’t any better than the fire falling onto you. You always want to be below where the fire is because that’s where the fresh cool air is, and where the heat and smoke is not.
It may either be that or waiting at the top of a burning structure thats going to collapse?
once you get to the top of the structure, evolve some kind of hot air balloon to float to safety.
I guess if you ever find yourself owning the high ground to fire this is useful, or find yourself in a tube whose bottom is aflame.
Might also be that your only way out of a room is through a burning doorway. Gotta find a bottle of water and Riddick that shit.
