Regional Talk > Connecticut Chat > 5 die in xmas fire - Stamford..

5 die in xmas fire - Stamford..

reply to CTMustang
Ok, the lack of reporting has started to improve.

EX husband (filed for div. in october)..

Still a little weird to be sleeping with your contractor with your kids and mom and dad in the house.

doesn't answer the other question of how this fire was able to spread so fast that nobody was awakened or able to get out of the house.

It only takes a minute to become a raging inferno:

reply to CTMustang
wow!!

This story has really hit a lot of people hard. Thankfully the news has gotten the real details out there........ a mother screaming for her kids, kids didn't stay in their room, grand father died outside on the roof trying to save one of them...

Last night before bed, I planned out an escape route based on a couple different scenarios... the only real problem would be getting my big self through a tiny bed room window..

reply to CTMustang
The house looked like it could be from the turn of the century. Without gutting the house and starting over, a house of that vintage could be somewhat similar to being built of self striking kitchen matches, with possibly very little if any fire retardant materials or methods. If it had plaster lath walls, hoo boy.

reply to CTMustang

This sort of news makes me glad my house is made of asbestos (Transite) panels, despite the lack of resale value.

reply to CTMustang
Wow, tough news conference going on.

There's def something to learn here.

- House authority says that they did not have a final permit....and he just said on tv that they should NOT have been living there.

- No smoke detectors were believed to active..

- They are saying it was started by ashes from a fire brought outside.

- Mom was found on a terrace.

Questions from me:

- Why on earth was this torn down so fast?

- Where was the male friend/contractor? Was he helping out?

- Will charges be filed ?

reply to Grumpy
The field card at the assessor's office may show year of construction. Not sure. I'm familiar with one 1959 house. The plaster did not use the wooden slats shown above, and all the wiring was metal clad with switch type breakers. I think they call that wiring BX? I would think an electrician yanking that stuff around all day knew he'd done a day's work by quitting time. I'm no electrician, but that metal cladding seemed to be pretty tough. I don't believe today's spec wiring is nearly as tough.

You might want to investigate aluminum wiring at your house. It can be done right, but there were some instances where it was done wrong. I'm not clear on when these aluminum wire issues occurred. It's probably not an issue from the 50s or 60s, but I'm not clear on the topic. I imagine google could shed light on this.

On a safer note, I do believe aluminum wire & cable is the norm for what we see on top of utility poles. It doesn't seem to show corrosion like copper surely would. Just a guess.

We lived in a 1762 house that still had asphalt and double cotton coated (DCC) insulation on some of the wiring. You really REALLY didn't want to overload those circuits. In retrospect, living there without incident with a family of five is perhaps a miracle. 8 or 10 years before we moved there, an attached barn lost it's roof due to the load a UL approved electric heater placed upon a circuit. It wasn't the heater's fault. It was asphalt insulated wiring. Apparently the insulation melted away and turned the wire itself into a heating element attached to 200 plus year old wood. (There may also have been other loads on that same line when the fire occurred.) Lost a slate roof in the process.

I worked for an electrician for a few years in Houston.

Aluminum wiring:

It does corrode, and badly. It is particularly a problem with old switches, outlets, and terminations with copper, brass, what have you termination material. Special switches, outlets, split bolt connectors with cladding are used to retrofit. Terminations with copper wire is either with the split bolt connector or at least with what we called "green shit" which is an anti oxidizing goop.

The wire has bend memory and once it has bent, even slightly, it creases and narrows its circular mil and resistance is higher at such spots and they become hot spots when enough current flows, very very dangerous. Bend the sheathed cable 90 degrees and back flat and you've got a problem, subtle, but a hot spot.

The thickness of the wire must be greater for a similar amount of current to copper wire because aluminum wire is not as conductive.

Because Aluminum wire is not as conductive, it heats up sooner with enough current.

Personally, I would not want to live in an aluminum wired home.

Want to talk about old? Knob and Tube, what we had when I was a kid. That is REAL dangerous.

You can't compare what power transfer lines outdoors use to structural wiring, two totally different situations and environments.

IMHO, no, aluminum wiring cannot be done right. I have watched it catch fire, I've seen it arc, I went to a call to one house where only 2 seconds after pulling a bed away from an outlet I suspected with an oversize bed cover, an arc about 2 feet shot. I saved that family's life and their home. And mind you, the moment the answering service sent me the call, I raced over to their house because I was THAT worried, no, they didn't kill the breaker like I asked them to.

They were constructing homes with aluminum wiring even after it wasn't supposed to be used any longer down there. IMHO, Aluminum wiring is a fire waiting to happen. Residential wiring is bad as it is, let alone with such horrible stuff. Even churches have to have much safer wiring practices than a residence.

Part of the problem is that many electrical workers do very crappy work, it is shocking (sorry, no pun intended) just how pathetic much work is. There are very particular things involved in even a simple wire nutted termination.

I got sick and tired of crawling in 120 degree + attics in Houston, and breathing in Rockwool and having bad itching and rashes 24/7, and crawling over piles of cockroach dung and rat droppings. I do NOT miss that job.
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Join Teams Helix and Discovery. Rest in Peace, Leonard David Smith, my best friend, you are missed badly! Rest in peace, Pop, glad our last years were good. Please pray for Colin, he has ependymoma, a brain cancer, donate to a children's Hospital.