House Fire in Carolina Beach last night?

Erik

Erik

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2005
Location
Wilmington, NC
I was camping on the north end last night and saw a huge blaze that appeared to be a house.... near the inlet..... just wondering if anyone knew what happened... the flames were so huge i could see them clear as day from all the way at the entrance to the north end....

-Erik <--- hopes everyone made it out
 
I work at a marina a few hundred yards from where that house burned up.

Story I heard was as follows: Supposedly its a Dr. Who lives there, cause of the fire is still unknown, the couple who owned it was in Florida, there wasn't anyone in the house and it was burned completely to the ground within an hour or so.
 
Tim88XJ said:
I work at a marina a few hundred yards from where that house burned up.
Story I heard was as follows: Supposedly its a Dr. Who lives there, cause of the fire is still unknown, the couple who owned it was in Florida, there wasn't anyone in the house and it was burned completely to the ground within an hour or so.
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well it's good to hear nobody was home to be injured/killed..... the house went fast... it was amazing to watch it from start to finish from the north end...

drew and not u said:
What's with all the beach houses burning up lately...
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our real estate market is in a slum.... 2 years ago a ton of people were screwed by mortgage salesmen and now their homes are being foreclosed on.... and kids keep tossing cig butts into pine needles....
 
The house was owned by a Dr Musslewhite. There were no hydrants in the area and the lady who was house sitting was an employee of him and a friend of mines mother. There were no hydrants in the area close to the house not to mention it was a 1/4 mile off the main road, was a one way only and had only one split before the house to let traffic pass. The people house sitting were at the neighbors when they noticed flames at at the initial call to 911 the house was aready 50% invloved. By the time I was able to get the 3rd out engine from out station in route the first 3 trucks on scene had already emptied their water supplies, the dump tank and the guys swimming pool. Due to one way traffic, hydrant location ( which was across the st in a neighborhood and reachable only by U-turn off the main rd) water was being used as fast as it could be delivered. I spent most of my night directing tankers for water shuttles from all 9 departments in the county. The guys son was also not happy at the fact I cut a huge chunk of tree out of the way for the trucks to pass by without going off and collapsing the back of the gravel rode. Property owners lawyer was on scene and was ranting about us doing our job getting to the fire as we were staging to enter behind the first 3 trucks as to be out of the way of tankers as they came in. I remained on scene through the night as hot spots continued to flare up due to a basement in the house which everything collapsed on top of and making water attacks inferior to the fire below. I got on scene at 1045 or so last night and finally cleared up with the last crews this morning at around 3pm
 
holy cow... that explains the sirens all night. i was wondering why we kept hearing trucks throughout the whole night as opposed to just the initial sirens gettin on sight.

-Erik <--- was expecting to see one of those water plane bucket thingies fly over our heads
 
That is really interesting about the hydrants.
I am really sorry for the owner's loss... but am curious to see what the fallout is from the hydrant issue. My bet is that the insurance company will be finidng some way to complain about that.
josh, is there any particular law/code/ordinance that reuires a minimum distance to a hydrant? or is that just a "good safety" kind of thing that is only practiced by some folks and not others?
 
Insurance companies already do something about the hydrants.

Your Homeowners insurance is based on your proximity to a hydrant. Im sure he paid a nice premium. But giving the sound of the situation doesnt sound too uch like cost was an issue to him.
 
Josh C said:
The guys son was also not happy at the fact I cut a huge chunk of tree out of the way for the trucks to pass.....Property owners lawyer was on scene and was ranting about us doing our job getting to the fire as we were staging
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Back in the day when I played the game, these two chumps would have been sitting it out in the back of a cop car for "interfering with a public servant".

Remember that happening once, when a drunk guy decided to "help" our entry team. Too bad he "fell" off the front deck. :)
 
I guess pumping salt water isnt an option, maybe it kills the equipment :confused: I'm no fire jockey, but it seems kind of silly to be trucking water around TO the beachhouse. kind of like that Iron Maiden song..."water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink"
 
you can pump saltwater all day long... its not good on the equpt but like an outboard motor.. as long as you flush it and wash it afterwards its fine...

its just hard to draft water from the surf without sucking up sand, and sand will totally screw your truck up
 
Where the house was at, fireboat didn't have the stream reach it Part of the south end of the county uses a seperate water source from the county to supply water and over time the construction has outgrown them. They are working to revamp the issue but also due to the growth sometimes they can't maintain water pressue as needed. I've seen some hydrants do no better than 250 gallons a minute when they used to be at least 7 to 800 gallons a minute this time last year. Hydrants are also not as abundant in the southern end of the county towards the beach b/c it was never developed as much as the northend side until you got to the beach. Now with the growth new hydrants are being put in and several are in place but are dry hydrants due to lack of water flow especially during early morning and late afternoon hours due to prepping for work/school cooking ect in the community. Also alot of times our trucks can over pressure the system. I can name one instance where a main water line was cracked fighting a hotel fire on the beach b/c the engine was pulling more than the hydrant could keep up with. It would have been a straight shot to the 2 hydrants we used had we been able to skip across the road and get to it but no way to shut down 4 lanes of traffic. I did on numerous times shut down 2 lanes so trucks could get in and out carrying water and to fill up.
As far as drafting from the beach front theres a whole nother story about why that isn't done but it relates to pump operations friction loss ect and it's just way to much for me to type out right now
 
Two eons ago, I was helping on a project on a private water system. Owners weren't too happy when we had to tell them when we dug up the valves, we found they had 2 hydrants that were run off a 2" "main" at the end of the line. :)
 
Hopefully with the new water tower coming online alot of the pressure issues will be solved. Of course when your flowing that much water I don't think it'll matter much. Last years big condo fire I know of one truck that flowed a half million gallons of water alone done to the digital flow meter
 
so josh do you work at the firestation on river road right before the bridge? or at monkey junction?.. just wondering

sucks about the house. what crappy planning to have no access to a hydrant.
 
I'm stationed at the one on river rd and also work at a station in surf city. Think that acess is cruddy there are places all over the city/county that departments sent letters to insurance companies stating there not responsible in any way for damages/loss due to fire b/c they simply cannot get a truck down the road to the house.
 
This thread has been extremely informative. Thanks guys.
 
Speaking of paying premuims for homeowners insurace something else you need to consider or you may want to look at. Every district ( at least in our area and your area may be different) is ranked on an ISO rating. The higher the rating the better your insurance and I believe but not sure your fire tax may be lower. ISO rating is based on when a call goes out how much manpower you can get on scence, how effeciently they respond and how many people your stationed is manned with during the call. Situations pending on large structure fires you may have all available tied up at the scene and another station doing fill in. Alarms for example we try to go with a minimum of 3 ( all calls at least again circumstances pending) Depending on call/ manpower the next people to fill a truck will get enroute or either radio to central that the station is in service with however many is there at the time. Not exactly sure how they break it down as to what exactly and how long or whatever it takes to drop a point on the ISO rating
 
Man i remember the days of shuttling water many miles from the lake to house fires. Now we are lucky enough to have hydrants and they flow good.

Our county is on the same ISO rating. We maintain a good rating to help the community on the insurance and fire tax. I think i paid like $3.00 on the fire tax last year. Should be more than that IMO. Fire Dept needs all the help it can get.
 
I just saw on the news tonight about changing housing codes due to a fire at Ocean isle that killed 7 college students.
Is this the same fire?
 
From what I know of the SBI investigation I'm not sure what exact house codes they are talking about changing. OIB was very fortunate in the fact that usually when a beach town has a burning structure like that the heat and flames will either damage if not catch a neighboring house on fire due to how close they build them to each other kn turn meaning that within a matter of minutes you have multiple houses buring which was not the case in that fire.
 
They were talking about how the houses were built, with lots of eves and overhangs. This helped the fire grow rapidly and spread thruought the house quickly. I think.
 
Building code changes are in reference to the townhouse fires last year in the raleigh area...they say fire, that started outside in pinestraw and went up the sides of the building, entered attic area thru the soffits, which are open save for the vinyl soffit material which quickly melted away.

New building code changes they are talking about will apply to townhouses, requiring closed-in soffits. In reference to the OIB fire, discussion was about extending the codes to apply to single-family residences.
 
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