Richmond Indiana fire

[Moxie26]

According to CBS TV news this evening at 6:45, there's a major fire in downtown Richmond Indiana..... Is our museum buildings in any danger ??

[Farmer J]

The fire is plastic that was to be recycled and is almost a mile from the museum. Rest assured the museum staff and I have checked and there is no danger to us. Jerry

[TWrenn]

The fire is plastic that was to be recycled and is almost a mile from the museum. Rest assured the museum staff and I have checked and there is no danger to us. Jerry

WHEW!! Thank GOD for that, but prayers to those in need for sure. Thanks Jerry!

[Moxie26]

CBSTV news report 24 hours later has the toxic fire still burning and possibly won't be out for another three or four days

[TWrenn]

CBSTV news report 24 hours later has the toxic fire still burning and possibly won't be out for another three or four days

Yeh, saw it on NBC tonite, was the first segment of the news. Man that was some wicked black smoke, and I'm wondering if any of it actually wafted right over "our museum"? What a mess. Seems so strange all these things happening so often lately, along with what seems like one train derailment after another and another and another, week in and week out. What in the heck is going on?

[Bryce S.]

CBSTV news report 24 hours later has the toxic fire still burning and possibly won't be out for another three or four days

Yeh, saw it on NBC tonite, was the first segment of the news. Man that was some wicked black smoke, and I'm wondering if any of it actually wafted right over "our museum"? What a mess. Seems so strange all these things happening so often lately, along with what seems like one train derailment after another and another and another, week in and week out. What in the heck is going on?

I feel like we just have so much news available constantly. All we hear is the negative and no longer positives.

[BLB27]

I agree that all we hear is negatives and no positives!

I tell my wife that the evening news with Lester Holt should be called "Lester Disaster" because it is all negative except the last three minutes.

[Steve Jelf]

News tends to be that which is new — different. Be glad that millions of air passengers arriving safely, thousands of trains not derailing, and most people not getting Covid-19 are not news.

The low media content of good news is a long-standng tradition. During the war Gabe Heatter began every broadcast with something positive — "There's good news tonight!" — before reporting the disasters of the day.

[Moxie26]

News is news ... We got to take the good with the bad, if we like it or not is a different story. If we lost all we have at the museum would that be good or bad for you?

[TXGOAT2]

18,000 milk cows died in a barn fire in Texas. I can't imagine how that happened, but it did.

[Moxie26]

Take the good with the bad Pat

[George House]

Big barn Pat.... very BIG barn

[Steve Jelf]

If we lost all we have at the museum would that be good or bad for you?

Obviously bad. You can rest easy about that. The chance of it happening due to this fire is practically zero.

[ModelT46]

I assume the buildings at the museum are fire protected with fire activated sprinklers. I also assume that gasoline and similar items are stored properly. How are rare paper goods stored? It is not the dollar worth of the musuem items, it is the historical worth that is important.

[Moxie26]

CNN reports fire is out, but asbestos cancer contamination has been found in air samples over a mile from the fire site .

[TXGOAT2]

I went to school in old, decaying 1920s buildings that were full of asbestos. It was in the plaster on the walls; exposed steam heating pipes throughout the buildings were heavily lagged with it, and the huge boilers in the half-basements were covered with it. The "new" school buildings, erected in 1959-60, had cinder block walls and classroom ceilings flocked with a spongey, fuzzy-looking asbestos material intended to provide some insulation and sound-absorbtion.

All the family cars had asbestos clutch and brake linings, and a great many residential structures were also loaded with it, as were most business and public buildings along with vast numbers of home appliances, especially those with any kind of heating element.

The only person I have ever known to have suffered any evident ill-effects (lung cancer) from all that horror is one lifelong heavy smoker who also worked around ag chemicals and who did a lot of welding, and another lifelong heavy smoker who worked in a welding shop.

When I was a kid, we lived in a very old house with asbestos roofing and asbestos-lined gas space heaters. The electric appliances had asbestos heat shielding and asbestos-insulated wiring.

I've spent decades working on and driving old cars with plenty of asbestos, used motor oil, leaded fuel, and crankcase blowby.

Somehow, I've survived for threescore and ten (and counting) along with hundreds of others. I attribute my survival of many years spent in the Asbestos Jungle with being a life-long NON smoker.

[Jerry VanOoteghem]

I went to school in old, decaying 1920s buildings that were full of asbestos. It was in the plaster on the walls; exposed steam heating pipes throughout the buildings were heavily lagged with it, and the huge boilers in the half-basements were covered with it. The "new" school buildings, erected in 1959-60, had cinder block walls and classroom ceilings flocked with a spongey, fuzzy-looking asbestos material intended to provide some insulation and sound-absorbtion.

All the family cars had asbestos clutch and brake linings, and a great many residential structures were also loaded with it, as were most business and public buildings along with vast numbers of home appliances, especially those with any kind of heating element.

The only person I have ever known to have suffered any evident ill-effects (lung cancer) from all that horror is one lifelong heavy smoker who also worked around ag chemicals and who did a lot of welding, and another lifelong heavy smoker who worked in a welding shop.

When I was a kid, we lived in a very old house with asbestos roofing and asbestos-lined gas space heaters. The electric appliances had asbestos heat shielding and asbestos-insulated wiring.

I've spent decades working on and driving old cars with plenty of asbestos, used motor oil, leaded fuel, and crankcase blowby.

Somehow, I've survived for threescore and ten (and counting) along with hundreds of others. I attribute my survival of many years spent in the Asbestos Jungle with being a life-long NON smoker.

Well, there you go... We were all concerned over nothing. Hooray for asbestos!

[5 WoodenWheels]

Well, there you go... We were all concerned over nothing. Hooray for asbestos!
[/quote]


Hahaha, Hilarious!

Asbestos is nasty stuff. So long as it's not in a "friable" state you should be ok. But start chipping away at it and gulping in huge breaths of asbestos dust, your lungs will not thank you.

Those salesmen who convinced homeowners to box in their houses with asbestos shingles must have been good. I always think how much nicer the asbestos-clad house would look with its original cedar shingles or clapboard or whatever. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

[ModelT46]

Auto repair men who did a lot of break jobs, often suffered from lung cancer. The 1910 and other early fords had the muffler wrapped with asbestos. i have saved a roll of asbestos to use as I rebuild the original muffler. I do not plan on hanging around the muffler when the car is running.

[1925 Touring]

As of 1:20 CDT Friday;
https://www.wlwt.com/article/recycling- ... n/43591977

[Scott_Conger]

Garrit

my first house had cement/asbestos shingles on it as new (I bought it as a 40 year old home). It was ugly, and the neighborhood was poor and dreary, but the shingles were in perfect shape and now 50 years later, still are. It was a great starter home then and is now. Though I no longer own the home, those shingles have served the dwelling admirably and at zero cost in repairs for all that time. Like so many things in life, when used properly, cement/asbestos shingles were a godsend to build inexpensive homes which were so durable that maintenance costs were near "zero". The real tragedy of asbestos is the fact that its health hazards were so little understood in the beginning and then so carefully hidden for so long after suspicions were raised regarding its dangers.

Like dynamite, if understood how to use it, asbestos did exactly what it was supposed to do, but was a real danger if used improperly or carelessly. Similarly, banning asbestos and NOT banning dynamite is only due to dynamite having a better ad agency.

[5 WoodenWheels]

Garrit

my first house had cement/asbestos shingles on it as new


That's interesting. I too owned a house that was clad in asbestos shingles but it was built in 1921 and later the shingles were installed over the original cedar shakes. That house, and all the others I've known with asbestos siding were originally built with some kind of wood exterior with the asbestos shingles being added in later years. So I made the leap in thinking that anything with asbestos surely has some more attractive siding hiding underneath. Learned something new. I will say my house was a bit frayed around the edges, and maybe there is something in the process of applying shingles over an existing exterior that makes for a less than neat job.

All this is making me think of an obscure but very good movie out of French Canada from years ago. I think from Quebec, probably somewhere in the 1960s. The setting for the movie is a town that's dependent on asbestos-mining for its livelihood. The movie is in no way making a statement about asbestos as that is not really part of the plot. But I was struck by an opening scene that showed the effect of the mined material on all the living things--the trees, grass and so on were all like concrete. Everyone was breathing this stuff--including, no doubt, the filmmakers. Wish I could remember the name of the movie.

[Scott_Conger]

this was my first home purchased in 1979...mortgage on it was $196. The squirrels planted the acorns in the flowerbed and I transplanted the sprouts 6 months later...those are the oaks. I painted the darn thing blue and as you can see, the next owners (who also still own it) apparently liked the color!

Humble little place but it started me on my financial journey and am so thankful that I did...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/3321+ ... 11c21twztf

Those shingle siding pieces are undoubtedly different than what you are used to thinking about...they are like giant playing cards with the feel and heft of slate shingles. Each held on with 3 nails at the top and overlapped like roofing shingles. So long as you don't take a baseball bat to them or the termites consume the studs, they will be there to see the Rapture...and all perfectly safe to handle or be around (just don't grind them up or you'll be the proud owner of a SuperFund Site).

[5 WoodenWheels]

this was my first home purchased in 1979...mortgage on it was $196. The squirrels planted the acorns in the flowerbed and I transplanted the sprouts 6 months later...those are the oaks. I painted the darn thing blue and as you can see, the next owners (who also still own it) apparently liked the color!

Pretty little house. I'm a fan of smaller places. Lots of land ok, but house doesn't have to be a palace. I had trees I planted in front of my non-asbestos house. Little pencil-sized seedlings when I put them in the ground. They'd stop a car now--beautiful, mature cherry trees that produce fruit like crazy. Mostly what I miss about that place.

[TXGOAT2]

Asbestos miners have had issues, however, many of them were also smokers. I have no fear of asbestos siding, but I would not care to be an installer, especially if I was addicted to tobacco. BTW, the old house I mentioned above was clad in the asbestos siding about 1955. The place was layered in leaded paint, too. The Chevrolet and Ford dealerships here were old structures with old fashioned service shops and old equipment. All those shop guys smoked and worked around and with leaded fuel in a shop that was usually filled with fumes from gasoline, carburetor cleaner, (nasty stuff!) cigarettes, the hot tank, and exhaust fumes. A number of them worked in those environments for decades and several ran smaller independent garages after retirement. A number of them lived into their late 70s and into their 80s. They smoked cigarettes morning to night, and ate food that would send dieticians into screaming fits, yet they outlived Superman's wife, who did noe of the above. She ate her peas, and yet she died young. Billions were spent "remediating" asbestos and destroying many old structures before sanity re-emerged and it was determined that "remediating" the issue was as likley to exacerbate it as not, and in any case, it made two messes or more out of one.

Don't smoke ANYTHING. Don't go anywhere near Camp Lejeune. Never look at a picture of Joe Camel!
Avoid closed-in spaces that are poorly ventilated. Stay way from tanning beds, but do not fear the sun, within reason.

[TXGOAT2]

One work environment I would avoid would be an auto body shop. While shop practice and ventilation is no doubt better today than in years past, the materials used are far more toxic.

[TRDxB2]

CNN reports fire is out, but asbestos cancer contamination has been found in air samples over a mile from the fire site .

CNN reporting is often out of context.
Here is what they said "One of two air samples taken a little more than a mile from the fire site detected chrysotile asbestos in debris, an EPA official said Thursday. Also called white asbestos, it can cause cancer and is used in products from cement to plastics to textiles."

This doesn't mean that the sample was generated from the fire or was present at the the location where the sample was taken from. Its up to the EPA to explain the significance not CNN.

Some Facts
--
Asbestos is the generic commercial designation for a group of naturally occurring mineral silicate fibers of the serpentine and amphibole series. These include the serpentine mineral chrysotile (also known as ‘white asbestos’), and the five amphibole minerals – actinolite, amosite (also known as ‘brown asbestos’), anthophyllite, crocidolite (also known as ‘blue asbestos’), and tremolite.
--
Ambient, or background, air usually contains between 10 and 200 asbestos fibers in every 1000 liters (or cubic meter) of air (equivalent to 0.01 to 0.20 fibers per liter of air) meaning we may breath up to 5000 fibers per day. However, it is extremely rare to get an asbestos-related disease from this level of exposure.
--
Asbestos mining in the U.S. began just before the turn of the 20th century. The first mine opened in the Sall Mountain area of Georgia. Eventually, about 60 mines were operating in the eastern U.S., while many others were thriving in California, Oregon and Washington.
The last operation to close on the East Coast was the Lowell chrysotile quarry in Vermont, which ceased operations in 1993. The King City Asbestos Company (KCAC) mine in the Coalinga asbestos district of San Benito and Fresno Counties in California was the last asbestos operation in the U.S., closing in 2002.

asbestos ore.png (473.5 KiB) Viewed 6039 times

--

[Wayne Sheldon]

I could write pages on this subject (drift!), but just can't right now (is that a chorus of "Hoorays" I hear?).
Scott C has it right! Asbestos, properly handled, is not all that bad!
Yes, it IS toxic and a true carcinogen. Many years ago I did business with a brake and clutch shop that did excellent work on antique automobiles. The young man working there was a real craftsman! One day I took some shoes in to be relined, and he was complaining of a back ache. Six months (literally!) later I went back with something else to be repaired and found out he had died of a cancer he didn't know he had six months earlier! He was in his mid 30s. I know it was the asbestos.
As a communications systems contractor, I have been through numerous asbestos seminars. And I know I have worked around a lot of it myself. I also know from an asbestos seminar how many natural asbestos sites are known to exist in the Western half of Nevada county where I live! I (somewhere?) have a map showing their locations. One of them is two miles from my house! It is right alongside the shoulder of highway 49.

Fact is, although some would say it is an opinion, that asbestos is mostly a "make lawyers rich" scam.

In San Jose, California, a Southern area of the city, the surrounding area almost totally covered in suburbs, is a lone small hill sticking up a couple hundred feet from the valley floor. You can't miss it if you are driving in the area. It is a few miles to drive around it, and can be seen for many miles in every direction. The hill is steep and rugged with a lot of loose rocky soil on it. For a hundred years before the area was covered in suburbs, seventy years even before the airport there was built, farmers filled the surrounding areas in vegetables and orchards!. But they stayed away off that hill. Not just because it was steep and rugged. Farmers knew how to fix that. But because nothing good could be grown on the hill. They knew, the hill is a natural asbestos site, and therefore, nothing good wants to grow there. When I was growing up in the area? Older locals often called it "Asbestos Hill"! But nobody in the area calls it that anymore!

Some may want to point out that the fact nothing good will grow there is because the asbestos is toxic and therefore IS dangerous!!!
However, I want to point out something else. IF asbestos is that bad? Every time the wind blows? Natural asbestos is carried for miles downwind!!!! IF asbestos is THAT bad? Why aren't hundreds of longtime residents in the area dying from it every year? Why did they continue to build thousands of homes AFTER they figured out asbestos was a carcinogen?

Better that people should know what they are dealing with, and if working with an asbestos product, know how to handle it and how to not handle it.

[TXGOAT2]

Avoiding smoking will substantially reduce your chances of developing lung cancer, whether from the smoke itself or from its destructive effects on the body's natural defenses against inhaled particles of dust, pollen, and whatever, including asbestos and other durable irritants.

SEE: "Tracheal Cilia"

Smoking disables the tracheal cilia, which makes the smoker much more vulnerable to airborne irritants such as asbestos fibers, as welll as bacteria, virus, and other noxious airborne particulates.

This debilitating effect is in addition to the severe toxicity of many components of tobacco smoke and other smoke.

[Burger in Spokane]

All these asbestos mines closing operations, it is no wonder why it is so
hard to get good asbestos anymore !

When I smoke, I ALWAYS wear my asbestos suit ! No exceptions !

[browning]

My father was a truck driver as I was growing up, not the over the road kind, but one who hauled coal from the open pit mines to the tipple to be processed. Back then it was possible to ride along with him and I did as often as I was allowed. I remember being absolutely fascinated by all of the mining equipment that I saw in operation back then and I was particularly interested in the loading shovels that loaded the trucks. They were a maze of pulleys, cables, levers and such and I never got over the desire to operate one of them. Fast forward about half a century, I found a restored loading shovel for sale within a hundred miles and within my “toy” budget. After all those years I finally got to operate the machine of my boyhood dreams. I had quite a bit of experience with newer earth movers but made quite a spectacle while I learned to run a cable operated machine with clutches and brakes for each function. After an hour or so of slapping cables and clanging and banging, I kind of got the hang of it and spent many hours playing with my shovel. One day as I was operating that machine I realized that I was in a very small cab surrounded by about a half dozen very large brake and clutch drums that were, by design, constantly slipping or gripping just a few feet from where I sat and there was no doubt that it was asbestos lining that was doing the work. I only kept that machine for a decade or so and only played with it occasionally, but I have often thought about the men who ran those things for a lifetime, often with a cigarette hanging from their lips, summer and winter. Those small cabs were nothing short of asbestos fiber generators but I don’t recall ever hearing about their operators premature demise.

[TXGOAT2]

In a case like the loading shovel, adding a blower to push outside air into and through the cab would reduce exposure to any brake dust, smoke, etc. An old coot from around here used to run a huge dragline shovel and a huge old cable blade Caterpillar. He hauled his equipment on a twin screw 1950's B 61 Series Mack Thermodyne and a huge, heavy old float. He worked that equipment into his late seventies and did his own maintenence. Aftrer he passed away, a big rancher bought the old equipment. Eventually, I got the Mack truck, which I still have. The rancher told me he did not know how to run the dragline, so he sold it and the float to a scrap yard. The Cat may still be on the ranch. That old truck is physically demanding to drive even running bareback. Very heavy steering and a Triplex 15 speed with a power divider running a huge winch with 1" cable. I don't know how that old boy handled it when it was heavily loaded. None of that equipment had power or hydraulic anything. The Cat had no cab, and the dragline cab was little more than a steel box nestled among the brake and clutch drums and a webwork of cable. He used the Cat to grub out and rake brush and mesquite, and used the dragline to "muck out" stock ponds. He could set up the dragline on dry land near a pond and sling the huge toothed bucket out into the water and muck and willow brush and haul out huge gobs of stuff, then dump it off to one side.

[Norman Kling]

Every person reacts to carcinagens in a different way. I had one uncle who smoked and died of lung cancer at about age 58. Another worked in a mine and also smoked. He lived into his 70's but for the last few years carried along his oxygen tank.
I knew a brake man back in the 1950's who blew out the dust from brakes with an air gun and ground the new asbestos linings to fit. He also blew that dust with the air gun. And he smoked. Last I heard from him, he was about 90 and selling Real Estate. No cancer for him.
Norm

[5 WoodenWheels]

But I was struck by an opening scene that showed the effect of the mined material on all the living things--the trees, grass and so on were all like concrete. Everyone was breathing this stuff--including, no doubt, the filmmakers. Wish I could remember the name of the movie.
[/quote]


The movies was Mon Oncle Antoine, or My Uncle Tony. Good film out of Quebec. 1971

[ModelTWoods]

18,000 milk cows died in a barn fire in Texas. I can't imagine how that happened, but it did.

Pat, by now possibly you have heard this. Since the dairy farm fire, I have read and heard reports that the fire cause was methane gas ignited by an electrical spark from a machine or electrical source. It makes sense; you put 18,000 cows in close proximity waiting to be milked. Nature calls for the cows and they pass methane gas; a spark occurs, and BOOM.

[TXGOAT2]

I believe the entire asbestos mania was drummed-up over a study done on Canadian asbestos miners who had spent years on the job. The men most affected were also long-term tobacco smokers.

Silicosis is another dreadful affliction associated with long term exposure to mineral particulates, and Black Lung killed many a career coal miner. In most of those cases, heavy tobacco use was part of the picture.

Smoking tobacco combined with chronic exposure to durable airborne particulates, such as asbestos, coal, or rock dust, is a very dangerous combination.

PS: Stay out of your basement! It's SEETHING with RADON!

[TXGOAT2]

I can't imagine how or why anyone would want to concentrate 18,000 cows in any kind of structure.

I hadn't heard about the methane angle. Cows are not generally considered to be an explosion risk, but large accumulations of manure would be another matter.

They would have to have had some kind of manure handling system in the facility, probably a system of gutters that allowed the waste to be flushed into some kind of below-grade holding tanks, like a gigantic septic system. The manure would be pumped out and spread over fields or sold to fertilizer producers. Manure can contain methane, and probably releases some methane as it decomposes. That evidently provided enough accumulation of methane to cause an explosion.

Better structure ventilation would prevent a repeat, and better management of manure tank venting is evidently needed. Several smaller milking barns with some open space between them would be a prudent idea. I would not want manure tanks under the milking barn floor.

[BUSHMIKE]

You could see the black fallout from the Watertown, Wisconsin tire fire on Satellite imagery on the downwind path all the way to Lake Michigan. 7 local fire departments put water on it 24/7 for weeks. It depleted several years of dept funds and left several communities with minimal fire protection for weeks.

[ModelTWoods]

I can't imagine how or why anyone would want to concentrate 18,000 cows in any kind of structure.

I hadn't heard about the methane angle. Cows are not generally considered to be an explosion risk, but large accumulations of manure would be another matter.

They would have to have had some kind of manure handling system in the facility, probably a system of gutters that allowed the waste to be flushed into some kind of below-grade holding tanks, like a gigantic septic system. The manure would be pumped out and spread over fields or sold to fertilizer producers. Manure can contain methane, and probably releases some methane as it decomposes. That evidently provided enough accumulation of methane to cause an explosion.

Better structure ventilation would prevent a repeat, and better management of manure tank venting is evidently needed. Several smaller milking barns with some open space between them would be a prudent idea. I would not want manure tanks under the milking barn floor.

Pat, I also heard that the owners of this operation had been inspected and given warnings at least twice in the last year.

[TXGOAT2]

The owners had a lot to lose. Common sense beats a dense jungle of regulations and an army of regulators, who too often are merely tax collectors.

[Moxie26]

I would definitely stay away from ordering barbecue takeout from that area.

[tdump]

You know, if you rubbed motor oil on a mouse's bare back 28 times a day for 10 years,he might develop a skin issue in that general area.
Point being,to much of anything could effect you in a negative way.My elementary school,that was built as a high school in 1926 is still standing today but boarded up because of the asbestos that is supposedly all over it. Sad,it is a beautiful building,unlike the architectural monstrosity they replaced it with. Lack of maintenance in the 70's lead to it's demise. could still be nurturing children's lives as it did way back when had it been taken care of

[CatGuy]

I've never been to this museum and it sounds interesting. I also see they have a Homecoming on June 3rd. Is it a fairly big event? Worth the 8 hour drive?

[Moxie26]

Scott.. we've been out to the museum twice from New Jersey, and it is worth the travel time.