Colorado Wildfire: Winter tragedy
And the vicious cycle goes on with this depressing news, thousands of people and homes are suffering due to wildfire incidents and the latest one of them is what happened in Colorado, a few days ago - in the middle of winter!
Nearly 1000 homes were destroyed in this catastrophic event, possibly the most terrifying in Colorado’s history. The wildfire impacted multiple neighbourhoods spread by winds blowing lethal, burning embers, causing the town even more destruction and people missing from their damaged houses.
Most of the buildings destroyed were houses, however, the fire also wrecked eight businesses at a Louisville commercial area, including a nail salon and a Subway restaurant, 12 businesses in Superior were destroyed, including a Target, Chuck E. Cheese, a Tesla dealership (now that’s an irony!), a hotel, and the town hall.
The only good news is there aren’t any recorded deaths. Nevertheless, this is, to use President Biden’s call to action a “Code Red warning needing immediate action. Two people went missing after the wildfire took place and the authorities are still searching for them, as well as investigating the underlying cause of what happened.
Visualizing these homes on fire is horrifying on its own and the fact that it happened in winter makes it even more unbelievable. Regardless of why wildfires occur the question is ‘Why aren’t buildings adequately protected to minimize heat and smoke threats? The fire safety of fabric materials used in buildings is generally expressed in the form of ignitability or combustibility, with particular attention given to structural components that must stay in place for stability. In addition, heat has to be cancelled out and burning embers negated. Our MicroLourve is used in effective firescreens and ember mesh for windows and doors.
With numerous lives and buildings affected by the wildfires in the United States, such as Colorado and California along with the bushfires in Australia and recently in Greece, it is clear that fire safety protection measures for buildings are not being prioritized.
There are many forms of heat and sources of fire and the one single greatest form is the sun. Solar heat causes many thousands of deaths each year. Finally Governments are waking up to this and the UK Government has now produced legal Building Regulations to combat both Overheating and Fire with residential buildings.
