Ha, Death Valley's news page is a goldmine today. "Dante's View" living up to its name even more than usual.
Death Valley National Park: Vehicle fire at Dantes View
"DEATH VALLEY, Calif. – A car caught on fire at Dantes View in Death Valley National Park on Sunday, July 21. No one was hurt, but the vehicle was destroyed."
"The cause of the fire is not known but is suspected to be an electrical issue. This is the fifth vehicle fire in the park in the past year. Most vehicle fires in the park are due to brakes overheating on long, steep descents.
Amargosa Volunteer Fire Department and Pahrump Fire Department responded to the fire. The National Park Service fire engine was unable to respond due to insufficient numbers of fire-trained staff available. Park rangers did respond in patrol vehicles. " #DeathValleyNationalPark #NPS https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/news/vehicle-fire-7-21-2024.htm
I wonder how Dante's View compares to Botticelli (The Abyss)
I guess the layering in the walls in some parts of Death Valley does resemble that. 🤔
@ai6yr it's prolly impossible for me to pick a favorite National Park. i've been lucky to have been to most in the lower 48 & 2 in Hawaii
but Death Valley is up there among the best, IMO. just absolutely stunning views & vistas. otherworldly
i often wonder how many ppl who go there on a road trip from the East know how mountainous it'll be.
bc i had no idea. my 1st time there, i was a little scared for my car on both ups & downs (& luckily i'm not the type to go in the middle of summertime 😬)
@ai6yr omg. i've had to replace that fluid so yeah, i have a little idea of how viscous it is.
that sounds like a scary situation!
in those moments too... there's really nothing at all out there or even in the area. hope for a ranger bc you're on your own. i'd be flipping out if that happened to me
@ai6yr @rustoleumlove Rather like, "Wolf Creek Pass, way up on the great divide. Truckin' on down the other side...."
I once had a brake-line freeze on an icy hill. I was driving a third-hand International Scout. Hit the brakes, started to fishtail in bigger and bigger arcs. Started sliding sideways off the road, so I yanked the wheel around and went off the road fairly straight, dropped a couple feet down an embankment, and came to rest in a snow covered hayfield. Long pause while I calmed myself down, looked to see where the entrance to the field was, put it in four wheel drive, and clawed my way back on the road. Do not recommend.
@david @ai6yr @rustoleumlove I've accidentally downshifted a manual transmission into a low gear before and it was quite a jolt.
When I was a teen I once attempted to jump start a manual transmission International Scout in reverse (it had worked in my automatic, so...). As it turned out the problem was it was out of gas and I needed to switch to the second gas tank, so it wouldn't have worked anyway. What it did was destroy the gear box. My father was not pleased.
@ai6yr From many years’ responding to both, vehicle fires and trailer home fires tend to be minor problems, or catastrophic.
Aimed a hose line at a truck fire, and got a whole lot more fire. The fire had gotten into the plastic gas tank, and into a larger fuel source.
We were provided a few modular homes for training over the years too, and those got rolling fires fast. Even with the responders primed and ready, we didn’t get many evolutions with any of those training sessions.
Some training photos:
@ai6yr Maybe some mobile homes are constructed with metal framing and better fire resistance, but all I’ve met (in emergency services) were dried out and not much past structural kindling.
Cars have become more entertaining in recent years too, with shock-absorbing bumpers (gas stuts in some can forcibly extend in fire conditions), explosively-deployable rollbars, airbags ~everywhere, and hybrids and EVs with power cables scattered throughout places where recusers might want to use extrication tools.
It was a training tradition in one local fire department to set off an airbag every couple of years, so that the responding crews became more familiar with deployment; how loudly and forcefully those deploy. And how you didn’t want to be in the path of one.
Fuel canisters and gasoline cans and who-knows-what-else in many cars. Local cops found half a drug lab being driven around.
Yeah; there’s not a whole lot of reason to risk staff with a car fire, if the available responders aren’t trained and equipped. Not for what is often a total loss.
AI6YR Ben
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