1,345,500 fires in 2015, 3200 died and 13,000 civilian injuries the big apartment fire in Oakland this morning was huge

  I woke up this morning sat in my chair and opened up the news paper (yes I'm one of the last news paper readers), I read it on line, the first sight was a stunner. On the front page was a huge photo of another structure fire, this one in Oakland. San Francisco and Oakland have their share of huge fires, it makes a guy realize just how professional the fire fighters are. I'm sure that trait is shared by every fire fighter in the country, most likely the world. I turned the TV on the local news to catch up on the inferno, this fire appeared to be much more intense than the last two or three. Looking from the

It looked a lot like a volcano from above. 

overhead a few blocks away the reporting helicopter (drone perhaps) was looking as straight down into the fire as possible. That fire appeared to be the inside of the Calderon of a volcano, the entire structure was involved. There were 80 fire fighters on the scene, with a uncontrollable tower crane spinning around on it's own, that was an intense scene. The structure that burned down was due to open in 2018, 200 apartments and 31,000 feet of retail space, by 5:45 this morning part of the building had already collapsed, at 8:00 am it was a smoldering pile of unrecognizable building materials. This fire appeared to be identical to the structure fire that erupted October 2016, the similarities are amazing. Learn what according to the Red Cross we should do after a fire click here.
  Across the street is an apartment complex of which was evacuated, an estimated 700 residents were evacuated from nearby buildings. The Red Cross set up a relief center and most of the evacuated people took advantage of it. In one situation an elderly lady was asleep in her bed, she was wearing earplugs. She did not hear the alarms, didn't hear the pounding on her door a policeman busted the door down and hustled her out of the building. How could it have turned out different? Any thing she does to alert people at the door she sleeps with ear plugs in will invite bad actors. The only answer is don't wear earplugs to bed. Waking up people in the middle of the night from the front door is tough, when my neighbors house's burned down a man driving by (we are in a very rural area) beat on her door. She nor her husband woke up immediately and they were not wearing earplugs, it's tough to wake people up.
  I've been wondering all day about the frequency of apartment fires throughout the United States. I would have liked to know how many per week, and per day, however that's a lot of data it does exist someplace I'm sure. What I did find is the statistics for the year 2015 presented by the National Fire Protection Association (click here for more historical information):
There were 1,345,500 fires reported in this country, causing 3,280 civilian deaths, 13,000 civilian injuries, and $10.3 billion in property damage.

Yep, cars burn as well as buildings. 

204,500 were vehicle fires which caused 500 civilian deaths, 1,875 civilian injuries and $1.8 billion in property damage.
639,500 were outside and other fires of which caused 95 civilian deaths, 825 civilian injuries and $252 million in property damage.
  In 2015 a fire department responds to a fire (all fires combined) every 23 seconds, A structure fire occurs every 63 seconds.
One home structure occurs every 86 seconds, a civilian is injured every 34 minutes and a civilian death occurs every 2 hours and 40 minutes.
A highway vehicle fire reported every 3 minutes and 1 second.
  Fire is tragic, it's amazing how quickly a fire can travel through a 7 story building, it was under

construction so there was a lot of air space. Fire officials have not had time to address a cause, I certainly have no idea, there were security guards in the building when it started. Guards in the building underline how hard it must be to cover every part of the building, they did discover it. The best any of us can do in a situation like this is get up and get the heck out. Most of the affected people didn't live in the building, so there wasn't much they could have done proactively, It's wonderful no one was killed. Civilian, firefighter or police.
  Thanks for reading, leave a comment or suggestion, thanks

jimandkate   EmergencyKitsPlus.com