You all missed a fine opportunity to practice with those extinguishers
recently here in the scorched land of the lost (and found) hard drive. I
finally had a chance to drive around the neighborhood where I once had an
apartment, which just happens to have been one of the badly burned areas in
town. Our old apartment didn't burn, but all the ones across the street
did. Ironically, those were the ones with the well cared for yards.
But to the point: there are several hundred burned cars sitting where they
burned. A late-model Camaro really looks devestated when it burns, with
relatively little steel. Some of the fires were hot enough to melt
aluminum wheels not into twisted wreckage, but into little rivulets.
On the other hand, since the slurry bombers, water tankers, and helicopters
were not able to prevent this, a few hand-held extinguishers wouldn't have
made a big difference....
PS. I didn't notice any shoes in any of the cars. Synthetics, canvas,
leather all undoubtedly would suffer the same fate :-)
Paul and Meredith Brown
MR2: "Not the easiest car in the world to work on"
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