This archive came from listserv@dixie.com, which has been down since 1994 or so. John had published the article in Midnight Engineering, then made it available on the net with permission from ME's publisher.
John didn't make the photographs available for download, so you'll have to imagine those.
Archive FIRE.01: file fire.01, part 1/1, size 39934 bytes: ------------------------------ Cut here ------------------------------ File: fire.01 for _Midnight Engineering_ magazine Date: 06/08/91 Word count: Lines Words Characters 756 6860 39272 Copyright 1991 John De Armond All rights reserved ----------------------------------------------------------------------------Foreword
In the past "Midnight Engineering" has presented articles on some of the many ways the Midnight Engineer can avoid problems. In this series of articles, we're going to look at the granddaddy of them all -- FIRE. That's right, fire. The fastest way known to go from a profitable business to out of business in one simple step. As with other articles I've written, the material presented was learned at the hands of the School of Hard Knocks, an institution from which I should shortly receive my Ph.D.!
I'm going to do the best I can to relate the pain, the hardship and the emotional torture a fire wreaks on the Midnight Engineer. This is one of the most painful pieces I've ever written. As a matter of fact, I sit here in early June up against Bill's deadline (sorry Bill!) writing this article because this is the first time I have been able to force myself to address the topic.
Part one is going to address the actual event and outline some immediate steps that you can take to protect yourself. We'll be looking at many other things in upcoming issues. If there is one thing I've learned during this adventure it is that disaster brings out the very best AND the very worst in people. There are people out there that will prey on your disaster. I've met a few. I'm going to tell you how to avoid them.
[end foreword]
At about 9:20 AM on the morning of Friday, April 14th, I was sound asleep. Below me in my office, my company was going out of business, only I did not know it yet.
I had worked with my partner on our product until about 8:00 that morning. Our new product, the Printer Nidget, a device that attaches printers to ethernet networks, was progressing nicely. We had a prototype running, the firmware was mostly finished and hardware engineering was progressing nicely. We were only a couple of months away from an on- schedule product introduction.
Below me, a computer monitor decided to commit a fiery act of self-immolation. The flames escaping from the monitor ignited a box of paper and lept to some plastic parts storage bins attached to my workbench. These plastic cases melted and streamed burning plastic onto the cardboard box and floor below. The office air conditioning, sensing the heat, started. This added draft pulled the now out of control fire up into the suspended ceiling which was also the air plenum.
Having been asleep only about an hour, I was oblivious to the goings on below me. In my slumber, I noticed what sounded like my alarm clock. Still asleep, I was confused because it seemed too early to be getting up. So I did what I usually do when the alarm goes off -- I ignored it. A bit later, perhaps 9:30, I noticed that the alarm had an unusually raspy sound, somewhat like 60 cycle hum. Something made me open my eyes. I could neither see nor breathe. The air was heavy with acrid smoke so thick that even though the sun was shining brightly into my window, there was no light.
Having been in a rescue squad and thus having extensive fire training, instinct took over. I rolled out of bed and crawled to the door. There was about a foot of somewhat breathable air on the floor. The door was cool so I opened it. The air in the hall was actually a bit clearer, with perhaps 2 feet of air above the wall of smoke. I could see flames coming from the air return vent in the hall. I crawled to the kitchen and reached for the phone. Dead. So I hit the front door in a run. I found myself standing in the front yard in my birthday suit trying to realize fully just what was happening.
I ran around to the side of the house where my office was and saw flames coming from the picture window. After spending about 30 seconds with the garden hose knocking down the biggest flame, I ran to my car to get the portable cellphone. I realized as I got there that I had taken it in the night before to charge it.
I ran to the neighbor's house and banged on his sliding glass door. No answer. A convenient log made quick work of the glass door -- about the time he stuck his head up from the basement. He was not amused to find a naked man standing in front of what used to be his door. A couple of words later, he lept to the phone to call the fire department while I ran back up to man the garden hose. Parenthetically, I discovered that one does not have to be a religious zealot to walk barefoot on broken glass and not get cut. All one has to do is want to get to that phone on the other side bad enough.
The fire report said that the call came in at 9:30. Six minutes passed and the firemen were on the scene. Five minutes and a thousand gallons of water later, the fire was out.
So started the worst day of my life. Fire. One of the most lethal forces known to man and particularly to small businesses. As I stood there looking at what a couple of hours before had been my business, I realized that for the second time in my life I would have to start over, this time from scratch.
In the next series of articles, I'm going to tell you what happened, how it could have been prevented, what I did wrong and right and how you can protect yourself from a similar disaster. I've learned very quickly that the Midnight Engineer who is building a business in his basement falls into the never-never land of illegitimacy between the ordinary homeowner and a business in a traditional storefront. Not only are we looked at with suspicion by the government, most insurance companies don't have the first clue as to how to work with us.
Part I. The Actual Fire Event
In the first part of this article, we'll look at the physical effects of the fire and in part two we'll look at some basic protective measures. I'm going to try to cover what I consider to be the most important things in this article and get to the most interesting but perhaps less exciting things later.
The fire itself was relatively minor as fires go. The flames were contained to the office and outer shop area and to the ductwork. Nonetheless the destruction, especially to my business is practically complete. See photos 1 & 2.
There are basically 4 damage mechanisms:
* Direct fire damage. (Things burn or absorb heat) * Water damage. * Immediate smoke and steam damage. * Delayed smoke damage.Let's look at these effects in detail.
Direct Fire Damage.
Because the office environment was relatively enclosed, the fire burned slow and very smoky. Under these conditions, the smoke, flames and hot gas collected at the ceiling and descended as the fire progressed. At some point a temporary equilibrium was established where the infiltration of fresh air balances the leakage of smoke and controls the rate of combustion.
The hot gasses bake everything that they touch. The temperature may reach 1200 degrees or better. Paper is charred. Plastic melts. And each material gives off toxic and corrosive gasses that are also flammable. If additional oxygen becomes available, such as when a window breaks, flashover can occur. That is what happened in my case. The vapors being emitted from the baked paper and plastic ignited. Suddenly the fire was burning all over the office at once.
In a short duration fire like this one, the major damage is to low mass materials such as paper, books and plastic. Guess what most of the stuff in an engineering office is made of? You guessed it. Paper, books and plastic. Guess what most of the irreplaceable assets of a midnight engineer consist of? You guessed it. Paper and books. I lost essentially all my reference library of perhaps 1500 books. I also lost most of my magazine collection that contained among other things, charter subscriptions to "Byte," "Dr. Dobbs," "PC magazine," "Microcornucopia" and last but not least, "Midnight Engineering." Further losses include many of my work notes and papers that were stored on bookshelves for easy access. Little of this can be replaced by insurance.
Since the fire was short in duration, some interesting effects can be observed. Look at Photo 5. The wooden rack contained our Unix system. (dixie.com to you Usenetters) To the left were the admin. terminal and some Unix bookshelves. If you'll look just below the second shelf of the wooden rack, you'll notice a rather sharp transition from char to almost fresh wood. This was the level the superheated smoke and gas descended to during the fire. Above this "fire line," the destruction is pretty complete as you can see from looking at the books. The mass in the upper left of the rack was a stack of Telebit Trailblazer modems and beside that was an Epson MX80 printer.
Below the fire line, most of the damage was simply smoke. You can see unburnt papers in the rack at the extreme left. The 4 gray metal boxes on the third shelf of the wooden rack contained many of our backup tapes. Almost all survived!
Water Damage
Right at the start, I want to give Cobb County Fire Department a huge plug. They were the most professional and the most compassionate group of men and women I've ever worked around. Not only did they not tear my house up any more than necessary or use too much water, they also sought out and resuscitated our 2 "children," Persian cats named "Frosty" and "Buckhead." It required oxygen and breathing assistance for both. Both survived and are doing fine.
Nonetheless, water did major damage. When the smoke was cleared enough to go in, my office was standing in about 2 inches of water. The force of the firehose blew books and papers to the floor and saturated them with black, sooty, acidic water. The water destroyed any equipment it touched, either from the wetting action or from the corrosive effects of the fire byproducts.
Immediate Smoke and Steam Damage.
If you've never been in a fire, you cannot imagine how thick and heavy smoke from an oxygen-starved fire is. Everything it touches is coated with a thick, greasy black film fully as heavy as a coat of paint. For example, look at Photo 3. This was taken in my bedroom that is located immediately over my office. This stuff is terrible and very difficult to get off. This smoke is not only acidic, it is conductive. It will destroy anything electronic that happens to have power applied. Even after extensive cleaning and degreasing, we found many things such as microwave ovens would arc over and destroy themselves.
The partner to smoke is steam. There are condensibles emitted throughout the fire but the primary source of steam is the fireman's hose. When the first water hits the fire, most is vaporized. This combines with the smoke and makes that thick gray smoke you might have seen at a house fire. This saturated steam penetrates everything. We had condensed steam dripping off everything in the upper part of the house. Anything metal that this cloud touches is corroded even before it is cool. An example is my gun collection. Though well protected from the fire, all firearms were severely damaged by the steam even though I got them out before the house was even cool.
Another example is Photo 4. It shows a prototype board mounted on a piece of copper clad circuit board. It was sitting on a desk. That green stuff is corrosion! If you look closely, you will also notice that the gold on the edgeboard connector has been eaten off. And this piece did not get wet! The corrosion was strictly from condensation and smoke!
Delayed Smoke Damage.
This is something most people don't think about. The damage from the fire is not over when the ashes are cold. The acidic smoke deposits are also hydroscopic. This means that whenever the humidity rises, the deposits attract and condense moisture and begin the corrosive process all over again. Look at Photo 8. This is a piece of 12-2 copper wire hanging down from the ceiling. That green drop is condensed moisture laden with dissolved copper salts. This picture was taken a couple of days after the fire in an area that did not get wet from the fire hose.
This process has the most implications for electronic and computer equipment that survives the actual fire. We learned this the hard way. For example, our central UPS fired right back up when I reset the breaker the day of the fire. The next day after some rain, it did not work. The acidic, conductive smoke had electrolyzed the traces on the control circuit board away. It is vital that salvage operations commence as soon after the fire as possible.
Part II Protective Measures for the Midnight Engineer
I'm going to jump ahead of things here a bit because there are things that every Midnight Engineer needs to know NOW about fire and his business. Before I run out of space in this month's article, I want to present this critical information.
Property Insurance.
This is one of the most neglected areas for most Midnight Engineers. Most people ease into their business gradually and sometimes accidentally. The last thought of most as the business grows is insurance. We all have homeowner's protection on our houses. Most people don't realize that homeowner's policies range from no to little protection for business equipment. The best case is that business equipment up to some small cap is covered. This cap ranges up to perhaps $8,000. In my partner's case, his homeowner's policy covered only $2,000. Some good advice given me by one of the people working on the rebuild -- stay away from any insurance company with "state" in the name!
The worst case is that the existence of a business in your house invalidates part or all of your homeowner insurance. I've heard some horror tales since my fire. In short, do NOT rely on your homeowner's policy.
What is required is a commercial property insurance policy. Here's where the Midnight Engineer starts to find out just how much he is held in disdain by the insurance industry. Companies that write homeowner's policies almost across the board won't write business policies. And business .... in the home. See what I mean?
A few months before the fire, my wife spent literally 2 weeks trying to buy commercial insurance. The only company she could find that wrote both homeowner's and business insurance AND would write for home businesses was Central Mutual Insurance Company. This company sells through independent agents so check with yours.
Caution: At this point, I can honestly give only a partial endorsement of Central. So far, they've been great and their rates are reasonable. However, I've not yet settled the claim. By the time Article 2 of this series is ready, I'll either be singing their praises or telling you how badly they've treated me. Stay tuned.
A second problem you'll face is getting enough insurance. I had an estimated $250,000 worth of assets in the office. I apparently could only buy $50,000 worth of coverage. I say "apparently" because I've heard otherwise since the fire. I'm still investigating.
Before we leave property insurance, let's jump back to homeowner's insurance. If you are typical of the Midnight Engineers I know, your whole house is your business. You have books and periodicals scattered about the house. You use household appliances for business purposes. And you likely accumulate things because you realize how valuable a boneyard is. The end result is that the value of your residential contents is far more than the standard formulas predict. Here in Atlanta, the standard formula is to protect the contents for between 75 and 100% of the value of the house. In my case, that was not nearly enough.
The proper thing to do is to have an appraiser come in and appraise every piece of personal property and then buy insurance on that appraisal. This will do two things for you. First you'll be fully protected and second you'll have a record of your possessions. You must of course, keep the list updated. I've written a program for the PC to automate this process and the claims process. (Please don't call about the program as I've not decided what I'm going to do with it yet.)
Lastly before we leave property insurance, be SURE you have "full replacement value" insurance. The alternative "actual cash value" insurance is essentially worthless. This insurance will pay you only the depreciated value of your possessions. The insurance company sets the depreciation schedule. All I can say is that I only wish I could get away with as aggressive a schedule on my taxes. "Full Replacement Value" insurance, on the other hand, will either fix your property or replace it. In the event the actual item is not available, the closest equivalent is substituted. If you take very good care of your property and as a result, much of your property is older, you will be very pleased with the replacements.
Business Interruption Insurance.
In case it has not occurred to you, if your business burns, your income tends to stop at the same time. Funny how bills don't follow this rule. Business Interruption (BI) insurance does just what its name implies -- it compensates you for lost income during your loss and recovery period.
Unfortunately I did not have this coverage. It was on my "to-do" list as was a number of other things that would have saved us a lot of trouble. The premiums are based on your sales, the stability of your business and a number of other factors. I'm still investigating this type of insurance and will have more details later. I heartily suggest that you call your agent and investigate this kind of coverage yourself.
Liability Insurance.
This covers you if you do something to hurt others or if others get hurt on your property. If your company consists of you and perhaps your spouse, you can get a large personal liability rider on your homeowner's policy for very reasonable rates. Just be SURE that this covers you in your business.
If your business has significant assets and/or your business is risky, you should also consider commercial liability. Depending on your business, this is either dirt-cheap or so expensive you don't even want to think about it. Note that this is distinctly different from "Errors and Omissions" or as it is sometimes known, "malpractice" insurance. Since this article deals only with fire-related problems, I'm not going to discuss E&O insurance anymore. If you think you need it, you probably do.
Intellectual Property
If you are like most Midnight Engineers, your most valuable assets are your ideas, your designs, your software and your work notes. For the most part, these are irreplaceable. Therefore you MUST protect them. As I've discovered, many accepted protection practices just don't work and many simple things do. Let's look at some things by category.
Machine Readable Data
This covers software, datafiles, manuals and so on. In my case, I had well over a hundred commercial software packages and thousands of public domain programs. These were stored on over 10 computers of various types scattered about my office. Each was backed up on either DC-600 tapes or on floppies (Fastback) Most backup media was stored in fireproof safes. (See Photo 7) The bottom line is I lost a LOT of data.
Most all the commercial software was destroyed by the smoke and heat. I'm finding that software vendors vary widely as to their disaster replacement policies. In most cases, the media was protected and all I lost was the documentation. Many vendors refuse to sell you only a manual even after a fire. Perhaps I should include a "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys" list in my next article.
You can figure on loosing all your hard drives even if only smoke touches them. Post mortems showed that the smoke corrodes plated media. And on those that did not suffer media corrosion, the smoke so contaminated the controller boards and cables on the drives that no amount of cleaning would bring 'em back. We had about 6 Seagate ST-296 drives on various machines. We bought a new drive after the fire and installed the electronic board from the new drive on the fire-smoked drives. We recovered some data that way. We also got to listen to heads being ejected from actuators on others.
The big drives seem to suffer more than the little ones. We had a Micropolis 760 MB and a Newbury 380 MB drive on our Unix system. Both look pretty bad. Micropolis has indicated that they may replace the drive under warranty as a gesture of good will. I'm holding my breath in eager anticipation! That'll sure put 'em on the "Good guys" list.
Backup media was where things really got kinky. Most of the media in our fireproof safe was unreadable. I had placed a temperature tattletale in the safe and it indicated that the temperature never got over 100 degrees. Nonetheless all the tape and many of the diskettes were damaged by -- you guessed it -- smoke and steam. The smoke penetrated right around the door joints and once inside was held there by the relatively good seal of the door. When I opened the safe the day after the fire, very strong fumes escaped.
On the other hand, exposed media sometimes survived and almost all the tapes that were in regular metal tape files were unharmed. I reason that the openness of the file allowed the smoke to pass on out. The temperature probably got hot enough to keep condensation down until we could yank them out. DO NOT RELY ON THIS! Even though some of the things that survived are amazing, a thousand different things could have grossly changed the outcome.
Photo 6 is a very interesting illustration of several things. You are looking at my work area. The remains of an AT sit on top of the beige cabinet. Believe it or not, almost all the diskettes in the beige cabinets survived and are readable. I had to break the cabinets apart with a hammer to gain access to the disks. The top drawer of the file cabinet was partially open. Most of the contents burned. The drawer below was closed and did not even suffer water damage.
Papers and Books
It's real simple. Papers and books that were exposed were destroyed. Papers and books that were enclosed in something, even things as simple as non-fireproof file cabinets and book cases with doors survived with nothing more than some odor.
Most of the damage was caused either by superheated gasses or radiant heat. ANY kind of barrier will mitigate both. In some instances, a simple poster of heavy cardboard protected the books behind it. Simple metal file cabinets offered 100% protection. Everything in my desk drawer (at least the drawer that was closed) survived.
Protective Measures
I'm going to whip though some highlights because I consider this information so vital that it can't wait for an in-depth article. I'll be digging deeper in later articles.
Magnetic Media.
First and foremost, get a fireproof safe. Second put each piece of media inside a zip-lock bag. This will seal out smoke and steam. The disks and tapes that happened to be so protected were totally undamaged.
If you can afford it, buy a fireproof safe rated for data storage. There is a big difference between paper and data safes. The 1 hour UL rating for paper safes allow the interior to reach 350 degrees plus the fireproofing is allowed to emit water vapor. The 1 hour rating for data safes does not permit the temperature to rise over 100 degrees and no moisture can be released.
Unfortunately these data safes are VERY expensive, sometimes 3 or 4 times as expensive as paper safes. Being Midnight Engineers, we can devise other protective means. First, of course, is to protect the contents from smoke and moisture. The plastic baggies do that. Second, you must understand how the UL rating test works. A safe to be tested is placed in a large oven and subjected to a uniform temperature of around 1700 degrees by gas or oil burners for 1 hour. The temperature must remain below the specification. This test is the worst case in that the safe is subjected to full radiant and convective heat during the entire test. The real world can be made better. Here are some steps you can take:
* Protect the safe from convective and radiative heat. This is most easily done by putting the safe inside some kind of sturdy metal cabinet. Even if the cabinet softens and collapses during the fire, as long as the radiant path is blocked, you have MUCH more protection. An old 19" equipment rack could be ideal if it is of the welded type.
* Add protective materials. Something as simple as bricking up around the safe with ordinary bricks and mortar will make the safe almost impervious. Especially if you use the kind of brick that has holes in it and pass reinforcing steel through the holes.
* If you have a basement constructed of concrete block or similar construction, consider cutting out a window of block, digging out the dirt and placing the safe back in this little cave. Add a steel door as is used on woodboxes as a radiant heat shield. This is what I'm doing.
* Keep your safe in the basement on a concrete floor. One of the things that I've learned is that the most common failure mode of fireproof safes is that they drop through burned-out floors and rupture. Though the UL test includes a drop test, it does not look too strenuous to me. With the safe in the basement, not only will it not fall, it will often be protected by debris that pile up on it.
* For ordinary file cabinets, the above apply but in addition, you must protect them from crushing. Remember that they become weak as they get hot. I'm building a steel shield over my file cabinets that will keep burning debris off of them as well as protecting them from crushing.
If you don't have the facilities to do this kind of work, then by all means buy the commercial safes and file cabinets and pay the price. I'll be researching this area more and will be reporting in the future.
* Implement an off-site storage program for backups. Ironically, on my "to-do" list for Friday the day of the fire was to go to my neighborhood bank and rent a safe deposit box (SDB). A day late and a dollar short as the old saying goes. A SDB is about the best off-site storage a small businessman can get. The price is right, the security is unquestioned and most vaults I've seen have very good sprinkler and fire alarm systems.
Once you get the box, USE it. It may be a pain to stop by every week but it's worth it. Plan lunch out every Friday and as part of your lunch, drop a tape off. My plan is to keep the most recent backup in my fireproof safe and take the next newest tape to the SDB. Bring the old tape from the SDB back and use it for the next backup. That's the best compromise between convenience and security. Plus it gives you a diversity of media in case one cartridge goes bad.
Papers and Books
Pretty much all the above applies if you can afford it. If you have a large library as I had, full fire proofing is out of the question. However, some simple steps can be taken.
First off, unless you live in the boonies 50 miles away from civilization, you can be assured that your house likely will not burn to the ground. Proper alarms and good fire departments will prevent that. Thus, your protective requirements may be much less than the worst case. A good indication of that is your community's fire rating. The higher the better.
Mine was a perfect example. I myself served as the "monitored fire alarm." I discovered the fire early and summoned help. Our fine fire department stopped the fire in its tracks within 10 minutes or so of my discovery. As a result, simple protective measures worked fine. Anything in a closed cabinet or file drawer was fully protected. Here are some things to consider:
* Keep all your books and papers in closed cabinets. Papers go in file cabinets. Books should go in shelves that have doors that will close. No glass allowed. You can get bookshelves with doors or you can use the standard office metal storage cabinets. They're a bit deeper than you need but you can have them do double duty by stuffing junk behind the books.
* Keep 'em closed! A couple of file cabinets and my desk drawer were open during the fire. The contents were destroyed. Adopt the practice of policing your office and closing everything before leaving for the day.
* Adopt a "clean desk" policy. Ohhh, I hate this one! I'm the world's worst packrat. My desk typically resembles "Shoe" in the comic strips. As a result, all my current and most critical work was burned. Even if you do nothing more than rake the desktop off into a drawer or lift your deskpad up and stuff it in a cabinet at night, DO IT! I am still discovering additional stuff that was on my desk that is now lost.
General Protective Measures
There are several things that you can do to protect you, your house and your business from fire. I'm going to provide much more detail in future articles but a few require little more detail and are important enough to present now.
* Install a monitored alarm system. These systems monitor a variety of theft and fire sensors and when an alarm happens, connects to a central monitoring point where a human assesses the situation and ... to install and under $25 a month for monitoring services. I'm going to cover these systems in greater detail in later articles but don't wait to start your own investigation. Even if you have do redo some of your system as a result of my research, it is money well spent.
One very important note. Most all monitored alarm systems notify the central control by autodialing a number using your home phone line. If you have one of these installed, insist that the control box be mounted low in your basement (but protected from flood, of course) as close as possible to your phone drop AND insist on a smoke alarm in the ceiling directly over it. The reason is simple. By the time my smoke alarm went off, the fire had already burned out my phone wiring!
In my area, at least one company, Ackerman Protective Services offers a system with a radio backup. I'm going to go that route. If the phone line fails for whatever reason, they get a backup alarm from the radio channel. If you go for phone-only, ask the following questions:
* How does it handle a line in use? Your modem or your kid could be on the line when the alarm goes off. The better ones pass your phone line through the alarm box and will dump the line if it needs to call an alarm.
* How does it handle busy/no answer on the other end? How many times and in what time interval will it redial? I consider "demon dialing"; i.e., redialing as fast as possible to be appropriate. Remember that a fire spreads geometrically and by the time you get a smoke alarm, you have only minutes to take protective action.
* How many different numbers will it try? If the line to the primary monitoring station is out, what are the alternatives?
* Consider installing a home sprinkler system. I'm still getting quotations. Prices are not too bad, especially if you only sprinkle your basement/office where piping can be exposed.
* Consider installing a home fire hose. These are inexpensive and well worth the money. If I'd had one, I could have put the fire out before the fire department arrived. As it was, because the hoses to the washing machine ruptured, I had little pressure on my garden hose. Which leads to the next point:
* Install a water shutoff outside your house and make sure you have either a fire hose or a high volume garden hose attachment upstream of the shutoff valve. Have a hose handy too. I'm having a 90 degree rotation shutoff valve like the water company uses installed along with an industrial dry pipe hydrant. These hydrants have standard garden hose connections but place the valve below the freeze line and keep the standpipe to the connection dry until use. These hydrants typically flow twice to three times as much water as a standard garden hose spigot. At the same time you buy this hydrant, buy some industrial 1" ID water hose. This hose is VERY tough and will flow vastly more water than a garden hose. Store this hose out of the sunlight and away from your house.
Last but not least, PRACTICE YOUR FIRE DRILLS AND ESCAPE. I can tell you that waking up to a fire is NOTHING like any fire I've ever been in as a fire fighter. And it is NOTHING like they show on TV. Your actions must be practiced to the point they become reflexive. Do NOT plan on being able to do anything except flee. You will not have time to find a flashlight, to put on clothes or anything else. You might get lucky but don't bet on it.
Unless you've been there, you cannot even start to imagine how hot and injurious to life smoke is. Even though I've been in burning buildings in fireman's turnout clothes and SCBA equipment, it did not fully prepare me to experience that same environment naked. You have only seconds to get out of that environment and even one mistake can be fatal.
Emotional Considerations
This is probably the hardest part to write about. It's been almost 2 months and I can only now face a computer long enough to write this article. At first, you are numb and then you rationalize. I remember jumping into the salvage operation that afternoon and the next couple of days with enthusiasm. I rationalized that it couldn't be so bad; after all, here is something recognizable and over there is something that appears OK. It's not until you try to reconstruct where you were before the fire that the depth of the damage begins to sink in. It also dawns about the time the 3rd large dumpster is overflowing with debris and possessions.
Even though some papers and some data survived, I am completely wiped out. The insurance money will not rebuild my lab facilities much less give me time to rebuild my product. Because I "practice what I preach" as I outlined in my Contract Engineering articles, I have enough cash cushion to take my time making a decision but it is unlikely RDS will be rebuilt as it was. I really don't know what I'm going to do at this point. Anybody have any ideas?
The pressures on relationships are intense. I have the best wife in the world. Nonetheless, we've found ourselves at each others' throats frequently since the fire. Being crammed in a 2 room apartment for several months has that effect. My relationship with my partner that was strained before the fire broke completely. These social pressures constitute the aspect I was least prepared for. I try to lead a stress-free life and get along with most people. None of us were prepared for the pressures this fire brought upon us.
In closing, I'll say that this event has really served to separate the wheat from the chaff as far as friends go. I discovered that many people I had considered to be friends really were not. Some people whom I had worked with and/or socialized with on a daily basis did not even call. This really hurts. At the same time, some people whom I never really felt close to really pitched in and volunteered help. Some went far beyond the call of duty. I'd probably hurt someone's feelings if I tried to name names and left one out so I won't. To all those who helped, I say THANKS many times over.
I do have to put one plug in for a very nice fellow. This is Lloyd Carver at Austin Electronics here in Atlanta (404 449 8697). Lloyd and I got to know each other as I bought prototype materials for the Nidget. Lloyd's store is an interesting combination of small stocking distributor for small electronic parts and excess/surplus electronic inventory. We became even more friendly as I found out that we shared a passion for Datsun Z cars. When Lloyd found out about the fire, he contacted me and offered to get me replacement inventory and test equipment at his cost. This is far beyond anything I'd have ever anticipated.
Last but not least, I want to tip my hat to our favorite editor, Bill Gates. Bill's been super helpful since the fire and I really appreciate it.
Coming in the second article will be a look at what to do immediately after the fire. This is not only the interval when you are most vulnerable to shysters and rip-off artists, it is also the most critical interval for salvage. What you do in the first 24 and 48 hours will have a profound impact on your business.
If you should happen to be unfortunate enough to have a fire before my next article, please don't hesitate to call me. I'd love to help you. And I'll have a well-worn shoulder to cry on.
Lastly, I've gotten a large number of inquiries about my Contract Engineering article in the last issue. Many wanted to know details from Part 1. (Congrats, Bill. Circulation must be up!) .... including my "Midnight Engineers" and my machine readable copies of previous articles were lost. The best recommendation I can make is to order back issues of ME for yourself.
Photo captions: Photo 1. Photo 2. General office scenes These photos show just how extensive the damage to my office was. Photo 3 Smoke on the dresser This photo was taken in my bedroom that is directly above my office. No flame reached this room. Nonetheless, the smoke damage was extensive. The smoke penetrates everything. Our clothes in closed drawers were as smoky as the items in this picture. Photo 4 Corrosion damage This photo illustrates the incredible corrosive power of smoke and steam. This is a prototype board mounted on some circuit board. It did not get wet. The corrosion was as a result of the hydroscopic moisture attracted by the smoke. Photo 5. Unix system This is a photo of our Unix system Dixie.Com. It illustrates several interesting phenomena that happen during a fast fire such as ours. Photo 6 PC, disk storage This photo illustrates how items can survive seemingly fatal conditions. See the text for details. Photo 7 Fire Safe This fire safe contained many of our backup tapes and disks. Even though it did the job it was designed for, the smoke and steam that penetrated around the door damaged much of the media. Photo 8 Wet Wire This is a photo of a piece of 12-2 house wiring taken several days after the fire. The green drop is water that was condensed by the hydroscopic fire residue. It is green because the highly acidic smoke residue has corroded the copper conductors.------------------------------ Cut here ------------------------------