California will have to contend with toxic fumes for the next 12 months from a fire involving 5 million tires. Besides the obvious damage to our air, drinking water storage and state aqueduct system that brings water down to Southern CA, a person interviewed on the TV news broadcast made a statement that over time, the thick toxic smoke could adversely affect California's electrical grid, causing it to fail. A SF Bay Area resident was on the news showing the results of ash fallout collecting on surfaces of items left outside. In fact she had a dish of water placed on her patio table for less than an hour and showed the TV viewers just how much black soot-like material was floating in the dish. Would it be this soot-like material that will cause CA's grid to have problems?

-- Sharon Kurth (skurth@pacbell.net), September 24, 1999

Answers

Pray for rain to wash it away. But if the soot doesn't cause the grid to go down, the 8+ earthquake will before the end of November.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 24, 1999.

bardou, the November quake is BS. Stop giving this forum a bad name.

-- bardou is full (of@baloney.com), September 24, 1999.

I guess I'm not understanding the connection here either. The only thing that comes to mind is perhaps soot could possibly accumulate and clog critical air filters someplace. But that should be fairly easy to monitor and correct.

Can anyone shed light on the connection here?

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), September 24, 1999.

bardou... careful what ya wish for!

Sharon, hadn't heard that one. Humm. Not mentioned here, either.

Diane

LIGHTNING STRIKES, TIRES BLAZE
Smoke fills valley sky after wild all-night storm

Torri Minton Jason B. Johnson, Pamela J. Podger, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, September 23, 1999

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/09/23/MN52145.DTL

Lots of lights out too...

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 24, 1999.

If you're in the populated areas of California early next year, burning tires are going to be the least of your worries!

-- Ralph Kramden (and@awaywego.com), September 24, 1999.

Hmmmm. Maybe the accumulated ash is why I've seen helicopters spraycleaning the big transmission lines radiating away from the giant transformer facility 10 miles from Lake Oroville - rice burning every year puts an incredible amount of ash and smoke into our air.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), September 24, 1999.

Mornin' Mitchell,

{before anybody else gets around to it} um... those helicopters weren't -black-, were they?

-- flora (***@__._), September 24, 1999.

Bet y'all didn't know this-- (my emphasis):

China is the worlds largest producer of coal (1994 production more than one billion tons). About another 200 million tons per year is consumed by spontaneous combustion of the coal as it is still in the ground. This is about ten times the amount of coal that China exports each year. The causes of these underground fires are predominantly natural although some of the fires are produced by coal mining itself.

In northern China, some coal fires have been burning for several hundred years and many more have been burning for at least the past four decades. In addition, we have gathered evidence that other fires (now extinct) were burning several hundred thousand years ago.

Apart from the loss of a valuable resource - and the danger to mining operations - these fires are a serious environmental problem both locally and globally. The fires produce smoke and noxious gases, such as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide. The fires are also so extensive that they produce about 2-3% of the total world carbon dioxide output.

(From http://www.itc.nl/~coalfire/)

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 24, 1999.

Arnie-

The soot being carbon(electricly conductive),there is a possibility of "flashover" from one conductor to another if sufficient soot accumulates to establish a path for conduction.In effect,a short circuit.Quite a fireworks display on high voltage lines.Also quite destructive.

-- Sam (Gunmkr52@aol.com), September 24, 1999.

um...Tom, haven't volcanos been erupting for thousands of years too, spewing all these things in the air?

Aren't we getting just a bit out of hand with this scare mongering? I mean, we all could get hit crossing the street today...isn't Y2K scary enough and overwhelming enough for one forum?

-- Chris (#$%^&@pond.com), September 24, 1999.

When the fire first started the smoke was so thick that the carbon in it could conduct an arc from power lines to the ground. One of the major north-south grid lines runs a few hundreds yards east of the fire site. Fortunately, the wind at that time was blowing the smoke toward the west. (Yes, right toward Diane!) The wind has now shifted toward the northeast (Sacramento) and this weekend there will be temperatures in the 90's with an inversion layer keeping the smoke in the San Joaquin valley. (gasp, gag!!! It contains cancer-causing benzene as well as irritants and particulate matter.) The smoke is now less concentrated and is not as likely to cause arcing. The equally large tire fire about 50 miles from this one is still burning after over a year and this one is predicted to burn at least 18 months.

-- I am choking (choking@CA.xxx), September 24, 1999.

flora, no the copters weren't black, they had probably washed them.

;-)

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), September 24, 1999.

Thanks Sam 'n Tom... ya learn something new everyday! (If you pay attention).

Blue sky down here just now. Lovely! *Grin*

N0T a good thing for the flaming tires and surrounding communities. * Sigh*

That one falls into our... "expect the unexpected..." category. Who'da thunk it?

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 24, 1999.

Sam: Thanks. Once you got me thinking 'carbon', the lights came on. Now if they'll just stay on....

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), September 24, 1999.

The only people who need to be concerned about one of these monster 'tire fires' are the people in the path of the smoke, and those in the vicinity who would be affected by the cotamination of the soil and watertable. The underground coal fire in China has been burning since before I was born; I'm not near it so it doesn't scare me. I've read that the Chinese coal fires produce more carbon dioxide eachyear than all the internal combustion vehicles in North America. But my children, or their children, will certainly feel the effects, even if indirectly.

More than you may want to know on burning tires:

HAZARDS OF BURNING TIRES A discussion of hazardous emissions from burning tires in cement kilns as an industrial waste management tactic.

Chautauqua County Tire Fire "On April 23, 1995 a scrap tire stockpile, consisting of 5-6 million tires, caught fire in Chautauqua County, New York. evacuated. [...] The stockpile area covered almost 7 acres of land and had tires piled 15-30 feet high."

DNREC Seeks Solutions to Scrap Tires "Fire is a concern because one burning tire generates nearly two quarts of oil, which can percolate through the soil into ground water or enter streams as runoff."

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), September 24, 1999.

Chris, there was a thread a while back on Rick Cowles utility forum where folks were trying to think out-of-the-box of ways the grid could be affected, beyond failed chips, sabotage or fuel shortage.

I recall someone mentioning that the ways it can actually happen (and he gave a few real-life examples) can seem so bizarre that noone would dare make them up. Part of the point was these these items might be cumulative or complicating. I think the ability of a massive tire fire to affect the grid would fit the bill as too bizarre to make up, except that the threat apparently currently exists in California.

Part of NERC's contingency plan is to have as much extra generating capacity as possible. Meanwhile, refineries are going out of commission and other unexpected (gosh!) things are happening. There won't be as much slack as they implied.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), September 24, 1999.

Oops!

"...can percolate through the soil into ground water or enter streams as runoff."

Thanks Tom.

;-(

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 24, 1999.

I'm not the one wishing for the earthquake, I'm actually making fun of it! Diane, I am sure us Californians are waiting everyday to see if the prediction comes true, I'm buying a boat just in case I become a beachfront owner, and that's no baloney either! (hee, hee)

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 24, 1999.

A solution for two problems at once:
Step up deportation of illegal aliens, and make each one take a tire back with them (most going back to Mexico). The deportees will be rich back in the home country because from each tire, they could make half a dozen, a dozen, or more pairs of zapatos.

-- A (A@AisA.com), September 24, 1999.

You have to have lived in one of the border states (or Mexico) to appreciate the above joke.

-- A (A@AisA.com), September 24, 1999.