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Here is a new one from the great state of NEW YORK! Well to us any ways.
Sunday morning we burnt down a falling in barn and house on the lake. The house has been empty for 30 years or more. We did not get any complaints from the neighbors or people on the lake. We get a lot of about time someone did something with that death trap - eye sore and so on. Today our chief got a call from the NYS department of environmental and conservation. He was informed that before we can do any live burns we have to call the air quality control unit of the DEC and they need to sign off before anything can be burnt. Plus if there is two or more buildings being burnt on the same property they need to be burnt down on separate days. They can not be all done on the same day. We learn something new everyday.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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Between the hot weather/unhealthy air quality as well as the immediate local effect it doesn't seem unreasonable. Last time I looked, burning down a house does create a fair amount of smoke (toxins etc).
Dilution is the solution to pollution.
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Along with Jack's comments, the aspect of live burns does make sense. It has been nothing new in WI here that a building needs to be asbestos free approved and other hazards are not present prior to any live burns. Furthermore there is much that can be done prior to burning a building for training purposes.
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Permalink Reply by Moose on
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Derek, you guys were lucky. NYS has issued a continuation on the burn ban until October 10th due to the extremely dry conditions and lack of rain. We are on lock down here by me, we are to report any controlled burns to the authorities and have the homeowner extinguish the burn immediately, if they fail to do so we respond an engine with the authorities and extinguish and they get a BIG fine.
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Permalink Reply by Don Catenacci on
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A few years back a department in the tech college's district I teach for contacted the college about doing a house burn. The house was going to be torn down for expansion of a highway. The state denied the department's plans to burn the house due to pollution and danger to passersby on the highway. We were all a bit disappointed to say the least in their decision.
The kicker to this story is about a week later I drove by the construction site and the contractor had bulldozed the house and set the pile on fire! I guess their pollution wasn't as bad as ours would have been.
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It could have been that the fine to the contractor for an illegal burn may have been less than the fees to haul the pile away.
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Very well could have been.
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Permalink Reply by Joshua Bradtke on
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WOW.... if that's all you got you guys are lucky!! in here in Missouri if we did something like that we would have got a nice fine.. $2,500.00 per building so a phone call is not so bad...
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Permalink Reply by Derek J Sinesi on
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With all the paper work. Permits from the town,county and state. You would think that some place you would see that you need to call the DEC. There is nothing in any form that you fill out to do a live burn that states you have too. According to this guy; you have to call and they come out and check the place out first. They will tell you anything that needs to be removed; then come back out to make sure and sign off. Just thought that anyone in New York should check into this before they do a live burn on a structure. There was no insulation left in the house. Mostly was a falling in building and the barn had some old hay in it.The stuff we learn after the fact is sometimes surprising.
Moose, Here in New York all brush and trash fires we respond to; the 911 center automatically dispatches the DEC. We just put them out and let the DEC take care of the rest.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Make sure all of your live burn plans are compliant with NFPA 1403, even if you're not going to do any interior firefighting. It includes removing roof shingles, particle board...in other words, it takes planning, time, effort, and lots of hard work to get close to legal and NFPA compliance before an acquired structure live burn.
Legal and 1403 compliance includes notifying the neighbors, getting "asbestos-free" certification, getting "lead paint free" certification, notifying the environmental people for the air quality permit, etc.
Another issue is that some states have a law that makes it illegal to burn a building for the purpose of destroying it, period. There is a work-around for that - burn it for the purpose of training, and if the last evolution happens to be a defensive exposure protection drill, it's legal.
My department rarely uses acquired structures for live burns - it just isn't worth the effort or the interference with the neighbors. We do use acquired structures for truck work, Mayday/RIC, USAR, and Hazmat drills whenever we can. We still get the asbestos and lead paint letters, all of the required owner compliance documentation (no insurance, aware that we will heavily damage or destroy the structure, etc.) and everything else except for removing shingles and particle board prior to training. In other words, it's just about as big of a pain to prep the structure for destructive truck work as it is to burn it.
We've been fortunate. In the past four years, we've done our live burns in our new NFPA 1402/1403-compliant Class A burn building while getting destructive non-fire training out of two old fire stations, a partially-demolished big box store, a masonry school structure, and a closed restaurant. We got a week-long USAR ORE out of one of the fire stations, and days to weeks of training out of the other structures.
The most important thing - if the structures are falling down before you get them, don't put firefighters in them, and have second thoughts about using them at all. I do the pre-training inspections for acquired structures for my department, and I politely refuse to conduct training in the ones with serious structural defects, that are overgrown, or that would interfere too much with the neighbors, commerce, or the environment.
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This was used as training. We used it as a water supply class. We did our 1403 compliant stuff. We had 4 other departments. We set up a tanker relay to fill 4 portable ponds. We had 5 hose lines going off from 2 trucks. We used them keep the ground watered down and keep water on a garage that was in between the two structures. We also used them to shield our equipment from the heat.So all paper work and notifications were done properly. We have never been told about calling the DEC's air quality control division before.
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I realize that Derek, But I was stating there is a ban on ALL open burning in NYS until October 10, including FD burns. I looked into it myself to see if we could still burn for training purposes and for the removal of outbuildings on a persons property like we do from time to time, and they said the ban was a complete ban; no open burning.
So, you guys were lucky you werent spanked by the authorities! lol
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Moose, You are right our Chief screwed up. He did not realize the ban went in effect. This had been scheduled for 3 months now. They weren't even upset about the ban but the air quality inspection.
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