[GSBN] Straw Bale House Fire

[Tom Hahn]

Hi all - Way back in the day (about 1995), a student at Taliesin had 
built his student-living shelter with earth-plastered straw-bale.  It 
also unfortunately had a fire (started in an electrical box of the 
photovoltaic control panel) and burned down.  It burned the wood 
I-joist roof structure out first, then starting working it's way into 
the top of the s-b walls, about the time the fire dept. got there.

The firefighters also knocked the walls over, as noted by other here. 
Unfortunately, they hadn't gotten all the wood extinguished before 
doing so, and had to come back several times over the next couple of 
days to put out flare-ups.  Apparently, the downed straw was nicely 
insulating the wood embers that remained and they would slowly char 
until erupting again with all the fresh, unburned straw.

I knew the student/builder of the structure well, and so we went on a 
couple of forensic missions to the structure's remains, and he wrote 
an article for The Last Straw while I was editor (Joyce?...  sometime 
in 1996?... Issues 13, 14, or 15?... I don't have my back issues 
handy, but maybe someone can look it up quick).

In any case, in his investigation, he contacted the fire department 
and got their feedback and suggestions from the fire, and included 
our observations.  The fire department appreciated the fact that it 
was a "clean" fire, without toxins.  They also seemed to think, 
despite the straw and the flare-ups, that it wasn't any more 
difficult to fight than most wood frame structures, especially with 
the slow-burning earth plastered s-b walls.  And finally, there was 
some discussion about alternatives to knocking the walls down, 
including whether to leave a reasonably stable, unburned s-b wall 
standing and just flood it from the top, thereby not exposing more 
straw to more oxygen and possibly burying still hot wood embers.

Tom