Explained: Unburned trees next to burned down structures as evidence of secret "energy weapons"

[novatron]

So I've seen this claim floating around facebook this week, people are using these images as proof that "energy weapons" were used by the government to destroy California towns, as opposed to it being caused by forest fires. They say the proof is that there are still trees standing while all the structures are burned down, and the cars have melted. Here's one example from a post I saw.

"Forest fires...???...how about scalar directed weaponry...making obsolete all other conventional weapons...it's a mega $trillion scam disguised as a military budget...and humanity wiped out with the precise targeted aim of "Directed Energy""
https://www.facebook.com/richard.reichle/posts/1537649966322333

I'm trying to find a good explanation as to how trees survive fires, especially in the 3rd image below, how do you explain that one?

[first post btw- I really appreciate this forum, thanks for all the work you guys do!]

http://www.sonomamag.com/sonoma-nap...s-damaged-destroyed-north-bay-fires/#slide-32

 

[cloudspotter]

I'm trying to find a good explanation as to how trees survive fires, especially in the 3rd image below, how do you explain that one?

[first post btw- I really appreciate this forum, thanks for all the work you guys do!]

This photo is actually from 2015

https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/09/2...evacuate-injures-firefighters-in-lake-county/

http://www.sonomamag.com/sonoma-nap...s-damaged-destroyed-north-bay-fires/#slide-32

I'd say that the burnt structures here are were potentially more likely to have burning embers settle on them and get caught up in corners where they can start a fire than trees with wind blowing through them. Note that there's nothing on the ground to allow fire to spread. Just speculating though

 

[cloudspotter]

The text on this photo says "Fire destroyed the Arby's, left, McDonald's, right and Applebee's in Santa Rosa, CA. "

That area looks to be well outside of the danger zone (I've marked it with a black dot)

 

[Mick West]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkH5I0lXiFs

Why do you sometimes see unburnt trees next to a burnt down house?


Conspiracy theories would say that this is because the houses were actually vapourize with beams of energy from space. But the actual reason, as many people have pointed out, is simply that the wood in the houses is dry, and the wood in the trees is wet.

If you don't use a wood fire in your house this might be a bit hard to understand, so I set out to do an experiment to demonstrate this.

First stop was my attic, which, like most new houses in California has an internal frame of 2 by 4s.
There was a bit of scrap wood left over from construction. The same wood as the frame of my house, so ideal for testing.
View attachment 30574

Then out back to chop a live branch off a tree, and then I chopped both the attic wood and the live wood into pieces about the same size.
View attachment 30575

Cutting to size:
View attachment 30576


I then built a symmetrical fire from kindling and put the live wood on the left and the attic wood on the right. I lit the fire, and fed it more kindling when it went out.

It was very obvious that the live wood never caught on fire, whereas the attic wood started burning almost straight away.

The end result was that the live wood just got a bit sooty, and the attic wood was burnt through.

[Update Dec 14 2017]
A few people have pointed out there are other factors in my test besides simply water content, namely:

Wood Density - The live wood is oak and the attic wood is a conifer, probably Douglas Fir. Oak is denser than pine, and is harder to burn even when dry. However it's also still a typical type of tree in California. Doug fir has a density of 33 lb/ft3, oak is between 37 and 56.

Bark - The tree has bark, which protects a bit from the fire.

Shape - A square cross section will burn better than a round one.

None of this invalidates the point - in fact these are additional factors that show how the wood in a typical California attic is much more flammable than that wood in the trees around the house. The attic wood is about as flammable as you get, it's light, bark free, with sharp corners. And of course it's also really dry.



Admin: This post is from Dec 11 2017, but summarizes some material in the thread below, so has been moved to the top and backdated for position.

Post below show that this is not a new phenomena, but normal behavior in suburban wildfires:

Or going further back in time, the aftermath of the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, in Victoria, Australia. From http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/421153/australias-worst-bushfires/

From the same site: Como, New South Wales, 1994:

Kinglake, Victoria, 2009:

Getting back to the subject in the OP...

The 1961 Bel-Air fire...

Zsa Zsa Gabor's house on Bellagio Place

Cued to helicopter footage. Notice unburned trees and the two intact houses, both with a white roof. Most houses had a wood shake and shingle roof, (which were mostly outlawed after the Bel Air fire). These two had some kind of non-inflammable roof.


The latest episode on the 99% Invisible podcast, "Built to Burn", interviews a former forest service fire scientist who conducted experiments setting forested areas on fire and studying factors that determined whether buildings within the forest burnt or survived:

He set about learning all of a house's potential weaknesses — all the ways it might plausibly catch on fire. He did a series of experiments, including one in the late 1990s in northern Canada where he set an actual forest on fire. Cohen cut plots of forest and set them on fire to watch them burn.

What Cohen found in the experiment was that an entire forest could be on fire, 30 feet away from the house… and nothing. It was fine.

But of course, Cohen knew that radiant heat and flames weren't the only threats to a house. There were also the embers. He frequently found himself standing next to houses reduced to ash with green trees sitting right next to them. It was a telltale sign that the fire front never even reached the home, but the embers had.

If you are still skeptical, I recommend this documentary from 1978 on the 1961 fires, which shows in great detail how similar it is to the fires of today, but nearly 60 years ago.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlmEIj94fBk

 

[deirdre]

The text on this photo says "Fire destroyed the Arby's, left, McDonald's, right and Applebee's in Santa Rosa, CA. "

it's right next tot he Coffey Lane area. which is his first pic I believe

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4807069,-122.735007,433m/data=!3m1!1e3

pretty sure I read in one of the articles the Kohl's (the largest yellow square which is to the left/north of the arby's) burned too. My theory is the blowing embers too. Trees are not as dry as buildings.

this page https://weather.com/photos/news/california-wildfires-aerial-photos has some fascinating photos of the Coffey area.. one house is burned literally in half and the other half looks fine (from a tree top aerial view, anyway}

 

[cloudspotter]

it's right next tot he Coffey Lane area. which is his first pic I believe
View attachment 29784

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4807069,-122.735007,433m/data=!3m1!1e3

Yep. That park bottom left in your pic looks like the one top left in the first pic

 

[Miss VocalCord]

It appears certain trees are less likely to catch fire;

The secret to the cypress' fire resistance lies in its camel-like ability to store water, they researchers said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tree-as-close-to-fireproof-as-a-tree-can-get/

 

[sharpnfuzzy]

Ever tried lighting a large healthy tree on fire? It's not easy. Healthy trees are full of water and you need a significant amount of heat to overcome that. That's why no one uses freshly cut logs as firewood, instead it's left out to dry for a while or "baked" before being used.

Living trees, however, are very wet. In fact, although there can be great variation between tree species (and seasonally), a living tree may be made up of more than two thirds water by mass. Thus, a living tree is made up of 15-18% carbon, 9-10% hydrogen, and 65-75% oxygen by mass.

https://web.extension.illinois.edu/...ion.cfm?ThreadID=19549&catID=192&AskSiteID=87

On the other hand drywall, plastic, etc have very little water content and are relatively easy to light on fire.

 

[Ray Von Geezer]

If it's useful, I've used this study to counter claims that 'normal' car fires can't reach the +600°C temps needed to melt aluminium. It has ~800°C recorded at the tyres.

None of the pictures I've seen shared show melted steel, though they claim to.

There's also plenty of images of burned-out cars on Google with melted wheels, though very few where the alloy has 'run' so much. That makes sense as the heat would be localised, unlike these fires where whole areas went up in flames.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214157X17301053

Ray Von

 

[Ross Marsden]

This is fairly well known fire behaviour in Wildland Urban Interface areas.

Here is a discussion about it:
http://www.hillsconservationnetwork...ruth_about_uban-wildland_interface_fires.html

"…destruction in the WUI is primarily the result of the flammability of the residential areas themselves, rather than the flammability of the adjacent wildlands…Research has shown that a home's characteristic and its immediate surroundings principally determine the WUI ignition potential during extreme wildfire behavior."

 

[DJC]

[Broken External Image]

:https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1537649929655670&set=pcb.1537649966322333&type=3&theater

this

http://www.sonomamag.com/sonoma-nap...s-damaged-destroyed-north-bay-fires/#slide-32

if the pic on the top of the car is real .those rims melted to a liquid ..people use aluminum rims for fire pits that burn close to 700 degrees for hours and they dont even bend ...and there is no ash or anything in the parking lots to assume those fires started by burning ambers ...this is really strange .and how can a fire turn a house to ashes and not even singe the leaves on the trees ..?

 

[JFDee]

this is really strange

There are several explanations and references in the posts about your's. Did you read them?
Do you think they are wrong?

 

[derwoodii]

I'm trying to find a good explanation as to how trees survive fires, especially in the 3rd image below, how do you explain that one?

Its complex but more often structure or buildings dont burn due to direct heat during fire storms they catch alite by embers blown into or under eves, roofs and then the buildings burns down. The trees nearby may be scorched but if/as species with high water content and low leaf flammability they dont catch alite look un affected

this is an example of ember attack from 2003 Australia and can see some trees still un burned in vid ( a surprise even for me ) as OZ trees after decade of drought in the case of the Vid are more often high flammability


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzqC_8D12U0

 

[derwoodii]

if the pic on the top of the car is real .those rims melted to a liquid ..people use aluminum rims for fire pits that burn close to 700 degrees for hours and they dont even bend ...and there is no ash or anything in the parking lots to assume those fires started by burning ambers ...this is really strange .and how can a fire turn a house to ashes and not even singe the leaves on the trees ..?

i think you'll find that the car rims used for pit fires are steel not aluminum. I have on my wall melted alloy of brother in law car wheel rims from 2009 fires down here but his other car parked beside had steel rims & they did not melt..

 

[Leifer]

Post-fire drone footage shows PLENTY of burned trees !!
The few trees that survived, stand out among the ashy landscape, so people focus on them.


Living trees are about 50% water.
Homes are dry.
Therefore, homes are more flammable.
Also keep in mind, these are healthy urban trees, and receive ample (extra) water from their homeowners. These trees don't suffer from drought as much as trees in the forest, which rely on seasonal rain for their water needs. Also, urban trees often have a layer of concrete nearby, preventing nearby ground water evaporation.

If you've ever been camping and tried to start a campfire with fresh tree fronds, you realize it's almost impossible. You need to use the dry/dead parts of tree matter.
(Bear Grylls, if you are reading this, your methods are not getting through to people !!)

Controlled forest burns by the Forest Service, the BLM, etc. (USA) are an example of this. The dry/dead material on the ground burns, while the green and living trees above it, do not (most of the time).

Many people are misled, and think the evergreen Christmas tree in their living room will "easily" turn into a ball of fire. After every holiday season media videos demonstrate this.
But Christmas trees "become" dangerous over time, because they sit in people's living-rooms for 2 weeks or more.....drying-out, reducing their water content (the water-pan just slows the process). The videos demonstrating this fire danger, are of trees that have dried-out.....and a dry/dead Christmas tree IS a real danger because most of it's water has gone away.

If a fire is hot and steady enough, it can and does burn entire living trees, but only when the fire below the trees begins to kill and dry the tree above, by evaporating the tree's water content.
Many (most ?) of the surviving trees seen in the drone footage, were well away from the homes, or didn't have hot fire blowing onto them. The winds in this fire likely saved a few trees, by not allowing hot fire to contact the trees......and conversely, many trees were lost because the winds blew hot fire directly onto them.

Another misconception is...
"but trees are full of sap, and sap is extremely flammable".....which is untrue.
People confuse "sap" and "resin". Sap is mostly water. Resin is found in small amounts on many parts of plants and trees, and the tree produces extra concentrated resin to help the tree seal any of it's wounds. Seeing occasional tree resin, does not mean the tree is full of resin.
Maple syrup is sap, and it's certainly not "flammable". Maple sap is ~98% water when extracted directly from the trunk, just beneath the bark. It's then heated to evaporate extra/unwanted water, to about 33% water content. I could not get my maple syrup to ignite....there's still too much water in it.

 

[novatron]

I believe derwoodii nailed it. The most reasonable explanation is ember storm, not DEW. Thanks!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvbNOPSYyss

 

[deirdre]

i think you'll find that the car rims used for pit fires are steel not aluminum.

i actually watched a video where he tested an alloy rim fire pit and it didn't burn. it reached about 650 F. The difference, I imagine, with the above car pic (taken in 2015) would be the whole car was on fire, including the rubber tires.

heres another car from Tennessee 2016. http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/tennessee-forest-fires-liquefy-aluminum-rims
and 2014 http://rebrn.com/re/took-this-on-the-jobmelted-alloy-wheelfire-is-hot-613256/

so @DJC the "premise" that there is anything suspicious about the pictures you are seeing is debunked by the fact that you can find similar photos of melted alloy rims (or hubcaps) and 'healthy' looking trees near burned out buildings .. so either every fire throughout history is "fake" or there is nothing suspicious about the OP photos.

ex: Colorado 2012

 

[cloudspotter]

if the pic on the top of the car is real .those rims melted to a liquid ..

Yet the thin steel body panels remained intact. Odd that

 

[derwoodii]

Yet the thin steel body panels remained intact. Odd that

odd yes and more odd this picture is from 2015 event not the recent 2017... A well used CT method is create a picture collage to persuade viewers of authenticity.. I seen far to many dead fish pictures with no connection to Fukushima

Photos From the Lake County Valley Fire
By KQED News StaffSEPTEMBER 14, 2015

Melted metal flows from a burned-out car abandoned on a highway during the Valley Fire in Middletown, California. (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)

http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/09/14/photos-scenes-from-the-lake-county-valley-fire/

 

[Trailblazer]

so either every fire throughout history is "fake" or there is nothing suspicious about the OP photos.

Or going further back in time:

That's the aftermath of the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, in Victoria, Australia. From http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/421153/australias-worst-bushfires/

From the same site: Como, New South Wales, 1994:

Kinglake, Victoria, 2009:

 

[cloudspotter]

this picture is from 2015

As mentioned in post #2

 

[Trailblazer]

A relevant extract from an aluminium industry fact sheet: (emphasis added)

Aluminium in a Fire
If aluminium is involved in a fire and the temperature rises to above its melting point, the metal begins to melt. The melting point of a metal, like its density, strength, or corrosion resistance, is a characteristic which can be measured and used to design the most effective component for any particular application. The thermal conductivity of aluminium is around four times that of steel and its specific heat twice that of steel. This means that heat is conducted away faster and a greater heat input is necessary to bring the same mass of aluminium to a given temperature, compared with steel. Where an aluminium structure is exposed to the heat of a fire, the relatively high thermal conductivity enables the heat to be rapidly conducted away from the exposed area. This helps to reduce hot spots where significant localised property loss could occur, so extending the serviceability period. It will, however, cause the temperature to rise elsewhere. The extent of dissipation of heat elsewhere in the structure will depend on the degree of thermal insulation provided to the aluminium elsewhere in the structure, necessary to provide fire protection in that area. The high reflectivity of weathered aluminium is 80% to 90%, compared with 5% for painted steel and 25% for stainless steel. This is of considerable benefit and will assist in prolonging endurance of an aluminium structure in a fire. The attached photograph is a good example of the behaviour of aluminium in the massive form in a fire. A car, with aluminium alloy wheels, was caught in a forest fire that swept over the car and moved on. Afterwards it was found that the aluminium wheels had melted, molten aluminium had run off and collected in a pool of metal which solidified as the fire moved on and the temperature fell. The aluminium had not burnt.

Also some discussion of using alloy wheels for casting on this metal-casting forum, which indicates that a normal wood fire can be plenty hot enough to melt the aluminium:

To break the wheels down, start a nice big wood fire in your charcoal grill or elsewhere. You can either wait until they get "hot short" and crumble them up with a hammer, or you can go on and let them melt completely. Sometimes it's hard to pull the aluminum out before it melts, but it won't hurt your grill if it does. The only problem is that you may make chunks that are still too big to use. If you can let it dribble into an ingot pan, then that will keep it from forming oversize chunks. You can also do it in your furnace and let it dribble out the drain hole, as long as you're sure they aren't magnesium.

 

[Ray Von Geezer]

if the pic on the top of the car is real .those rims melted to a liquid ..people use aluminum rims for fire pits that burn close to 700 degrees for hours and they dont even bend ....

That would be strange, given that the melting point of aluminium is ~650 degrees centigrade.

What can we deduce from this? That it's likely that a wheel used in a fire pit didn't reach temperatures that exceededed its melting point, although the fire itself may have? That the alloy used for that wheel had a higher melting point than aluminium alone? That there's a difference between a fire in a wheel and a wheel in a fire, particularly when the latter is encased in rubber?

Or that a shadowy agency are using forest fires as cover for testing a super-secret weapon which has the same effect on cars as a 15 year old TWOC'er?

Ray Von

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

If you do a google search you can find pictures of melted aluminum wheels all over the world. They all seem to be the result of wildfires rather than ordinary isolated car fires. So, why is this the case?

A car is full of inflammable fluids. But in the usual situation a car fire is put out by firefighters.

In a wildfire the car is left to burn, for hours. Eventually rubber lines are going to fail. Gasoline and brake fluid are the two that I think are the most important.

While most of the brake lines in a car are metallic there has to be a flexible connection at the wheel, because the wheels move with the suspension. There are rubber (plastic) lines at each wheel.

When those fail, inflammable fluid is going to pour out.

The gas tank is metallic but also has multiple rubber or plastic hoses and fittings that will fail. Now you have gallons of gasoline that can fall out or boil out. That's a lot of potential energy.

I suspect these inflammable fluids are mainly responsible for the high and sustained temperatures needed to melt these aluminum wheels. I don't think it's the wildfire alone that's responsible, as is implied in many news photo captions. But the wildfire can certainly add heat.

Lastly. Aluminum is very conductive and will conduct heat away from a spot source of heat. But, the tires completely surround the rims and don't allow the heat to be conducted away. The tires are also burning. I don't know how hot tires burn. I suspect there isn't enough potential energy in a tire to melt the rims. But a burning tire would certainly be a good insulator; not allowing heat to be conducted, or radiated, away from the aluminum rim.

To sum up, I think there are four reasons we see these melted aluminum wheels in wildfires:

1. Fire burns undisturbed for hours.
2. Inflammable liquids produce high temperatures.
3. Burning tires don't allow heat to be conducted away from rims.
4. Wildfire is adding heat through convection and thermal radiation.

 

[Nada Truther]

Does anyone... CT person or rational person... have any reason why the govt. would use mystery space age energy weapons to destroy a couple of fast food places that are not entirely near the area that is on fire? If the theory is floating around, there must be some hypothetical reason that they might do it. Right?

 

[Hevach]

That would be strange, given that the melting point of aluminium is ~650 degrees centigrade.

What can we deduce from this? That it's likely that a wheel used in a fire pit didn't reach temperatures that exceededed its melting point, although the fire itself may have? That the alloy used for that wheel had a higher melting point than aluminium alone? That there's a difference between a fire in a wheel and a wheel in a fire, particularly when the latter is encased in rubber?

Or that a shadowy agency are using forest fires as cover for testing a super-secret weapon which has the same effect on cars as a 15 year old TWOC'er?

Ray Von

Probably the simplest deduction: people probably use steel rims for fires, not aluminum. Aluminum rims are expensive and can be worth a fair amount just in scrap value. They're usually decorative to some extent, being formed rather than having a hub cap (steel rims do this also sometimes). Every fire pit rim I've seen is one of those cheap black steel rims you see on discount retread tires or hidden under hub caps.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

There is at least one YT video specifically testing whether you can use an aluminum wheel as a fire pit. You can.



The video author uses an infrared thermometer temperature gun during his experiment. At one point the caption reads...

Gun is pointed at the aluminum rim, not the fire

He gets various readings, all of which are well below the melting point of aluminum.

He doesn't realize that these guns are essentially infrared light meters, and measure an area that's a lot bigger than the dot of the laser pointer. The fire is going to have spots that are hotter and colder and the rim is going to have areas that are hotter and colder. So these readings he's getting aren't precise at all, or very meaningful. What we do know is that the rim never melted.

But this isn't the same situation at all as in these car fires. The fire is small and doesn't release the amount of heat needed. The heat is mostly rising up and away from the rim. The fire is on one side only, not surrounding the rim. Aluminum is conductive and is moving heat away from the rim's inner surface. The outer surface is not surrounded by a tire, or fire, and is losing heat through convection and radiative cooling.

And once again, I don't think the wildfire alone is melting the aluminum wheels.

 

[DJC]

I guess this is common ..this is from the Tennessee fires dec 2016

http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/tennessee-forest-fires-liquefy-aluminum-rims

The liquid aluminum snaking away from the burned-out cars was once the cars' wheels.

The images are fascinating considering aluminum liquifies at 1,221 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Imagine the sheer amount of heat required to liquify aluminum rims, or a block," Frederick told WATE 6. "I can only imagine the inferno that was here when I took these pics."



Read more: http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/tennessee-forest-fires-liquefy-aluminum-rims#ixzz4vtBvzzbA

 

[Mick West]

There's a related thread about the burnt cars around the WTC on 9/11
https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-9-11-melted-cars-near-wtc7.t1553/

On a more general note, fire has to stop somewhere. So at some point there's always going to be things like unburnt trees next to burnt trees - especially when the fire is being fought.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Getting back to the subject in the OP...

The 1961 Bel-Air fire...

Zsa Zsa Gabor's house on Bellagio Place

Cued to helicopter footage. Notice unburned trees and the two intact houses, both with a white roof. Most houses had a wood shake and shingle roof, (which were outlawed afterword). These two had some kind of non-inflammable roof.

 

[M Bornong]

On the same day the Santa Rosa fires started, there was a 300 acre brush fire near the edge of Bakersfield, California, just a couple of miles south of my house..

Note the trees behind the house with nothing but the chimney standing, look pretty much intact.

The leaves are still green.

The leaves crumble to the touch.

I took these photos from the street, outside of the property lines, so I didn't get close enough to see if any metals in the structures had melted.

 

[novatron]

I found these images from the Black Forest fire in Colorado from 2013. These really shows the seemingly sporadic nature of wild fires, and maybe, as Mick pointed out, the efforts of fire fighters. It's all same here as the recent California wild fires- melted aluminum from cars, many trees that survived, even what appears to be surviving forest with structures that burned down along with the under brush.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/news/colorado-wildfires-51761771/

 

[DJC]

This pic is a little harder to explain .....how can a tree burn from the inside out ?

 

[Landru]

This pic is a little harder to explain .....how can a tree burn from the inside out ? View attachment 29817 View attachment 29818 View attachment 29819

https://www.aol.com/article/news/20...side-out-during-california-wildfire/23242952/

As for the strangely lit tree, however, though it hasn't been investigated as to why the tree burned from inside out, this particular phenomenon has been seen before.

According to Science Alert, though fire can spread quickly when conditions are dry, if the outside of a tree is damp -- likely due to rainfall -- fire can start to smolder from inside its hollowed-out trunk, and, in some cases, for days.

 

[deirdre]

This pic is a little harder to explain .....how can a tree burn from the inside out ?

are you suggesting (as per thread topic) that they hit one tree, in the middle of nowhere, with a Directed Energy weapon?

Why don't you try googling the answer.. and you tell us how it happens.

 

[Mick West]

Dead tree. Slightly hollow. Chimney effect. Here's a similar effect with a log hollowed out a little with a chainsaw.

Source: https://youtu.be/4hrugyC8zI4

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I've never seen a tree actually on fire in that manner, but I've seen redwoods that have been hollowed out.

http://www.stevenkharper.com/redwood.html

Sometimes fire will penetrate the fire resistant bark and burn the older dry heart wood. While the core of this tree is burned hollow enough to fit 25 people inside it is still very much alive as the cambium layer just beneath the bark is still intact on either side of the gaping hole.

An oak tree with pre-existing damage...

My friend did a burn on one of his oak stands a few days ago, and it went well; actually we would have preferred it to burn a bit hotter, but we didn't have any trouble controlling it because the humidity was higher than we like. The crop trees had all been fire-proofed in advance with a ring around each one, but, undesirable trees and culls were not protected. This is a big black oak tree that was forked, split, and hollow in the base. you can see ash at its base toward the end of the video, and that is where heavy fuel was piled, which caught this tree on fire. You will see trees in the woods that have big fire scars, and this is how it usually happens. An accumulation of leaves, sticks, or fallen branches will make a long-burning hot spot, and kill the cambium. In this case, because the tree was already opened and hollow, the fire went inside.

https://www.videoblocks.com/video/f...re-swept-through-this-wetland-forest-98a-epo/

Flames flicker as a hollow Green Ash tree burns from within the day after a fire swept through this wetland forest.

Hollow tree on fire, RFD, Riverside, Iowa

The last piece coming off to access the seat of the fire.

 

[M Bornong]

Diseased trees can have all the inner wood rot out, leaving just the outer layers just under the bark which is the living part of the tree. To my untrained eyes this was a healthy, beautiful shade tree. I had to have it cut down when the trunk started splitting down the middle after a wind storm. You can see a shaft of light that was from the crack that was about 7 or 8 feet up the trunk.

 

[Ray Von Geezer]

My guess would be that it's because hollows in trees are normally full of leaves and such (though at my local park people seem to find them useful receptacles for dog poo bags).

The tree in the video doesn't look like the burning caused it to hollow, if you look at the bark around the holes it clearly follows the shape, so therefore not new. Likely there were branches there previously that either fell away because the tree is sick, or them falling away damaged the tree.

Ray Von

 

[Leifer]

There's a LOT of YouTube coverage/chatter that "DEW" caused these fires.

Of the mass of incorrect theories currently shuttlecocked around....one is, that all the car's glass "was melted" probably from microwave energy (DEW).....and people claim "fires don't do that."

What's frustrating, is that a 10 second google-image search "burnt car", shows that the glass is gone in any every burnt vehicle, world-wide.
The tempered glass will shatter, and the plastic-laminated windshield will crack, burn, and melt inwards.