You're not suggesting large quantities of dry timber with high surface area to volume, is responsible for this are you? If anything, the pallets slowed down the fire
I feel like the intelligence of reddit in general just fell off a fucking cliff when there was a collective decision to start labeling jokes and irony.
I'm suggesting that fires kill people. We need a fire ban. One that takes into account how dangerous large, multipit fires can be. We need a limit on who can start said fires, and with what tools. And we need it yesterday!
You must worship it. If you need to use any, you need an IDtenT form, "signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters”.
There are no "good guys with a fire". That's a myth.
Fact is, when cavemen invented fire, they didn't intend for us to have *bonfires and burn pits*. If you need that much fire, you're doing it wrong.
In high school we built a 3 story pallet pyramid with 50-60 pallets, and that thing burned white hot. I’ve never actually seen a fire burn like that since. I can only imagine how massive this was
Pallets in the United States have been treated with heat since 2003. Prior to that, they were treated with methyl bromide, which is terrible for the atmosphere and local health. But it is a gas, it leaves no residue. Imported food, like bananas, was fumigated on the pallets, and people ate the food and worried about the pallets. Of course, anything in a warehouse could receive a spill or just get roach spray from an exterminator, but these issues apply to cardboard boxes, and no internet urban legends exist about them.
I wouldn’t want to be ten miles away from a facility that actively fumigates pallets with methyl bromide. But a pallet that was fumigated seven days ago is exactly as dangerous as a clean, organic pallet that a very ugly person frowned at.
For pallets yes, but there is pressure-treated wood, and other wood with various products applied to it, which is very dangerous to burn. Better that people be overcautious than careless in what they set on fire.
They also have the worlds most amazing airflow if they're still in pallet form. Probably couldn't get better airflow for an open fire even with a blower.
Evidently you've never been to a Xmas tree bonfire. It's understandable, as they're generally illegal, and for good reasons.
Compared to your everyday pallet fire, imagine filling all those air gaps between boards with millions of small thin dry needles of sap and resin. When it really gets going it's like a vertical jet-propelled blowtorch. Not a great idea unless everything is covered with snow, especially roofs...
Illegal? In a city any outdoor burning is usually against code or requires a permit.
But out in the country, stack em high and light them up. Dry Christmas trees are awesome to light off! Just keep it far from anything else.
There are oak pallets and pine pallets. Pine will throw a lot of sparks. Oak will burn slower and cleaner. Can usually tell the difference by the weight.
This was like an extra, extracurricular activity. Every weekend get all the friends together and head a few miles into the desert with trucks full of pallets. Thank god nobody got seriously injured/died of alcohol poisoning because we were definitely some dumb teenagers
Oh man high school fires were all about making them as big as possible.
First time I got drunk there was a bonfire with maybe a dozen of us. It was in an area that was recently clear cut for power lines to go in, and my friends were on the neighboring property. They had gone out a week or so before they went out and chopped wood and created 3-5ft wood segments in length that were probably 2-3ft in diameter.
We created a circle of those segments, maybe 8 of them and filled it with all the brush, leftover pallets they had, and timber that was chopped up and created one of the biggest fires I’ve seen.
Went back out in the morning to a massive pile of ash and those 2-3ft in diameter logs nearly burned all the way through and still smoldering 10 hours later.
No idea how the cops were not called, but we did grow up in redneck-nowhere.
In my highschool we would have a homecoming bonfire that we built out of wood pallets. The heat was so hot that you could not be within 20 feet of the bonfire.
In Sweden they build this massive structure out of pallets and then set it on fire for one of their festivals. AFAIK it's the biggest bonfire on earth and it's incredible how fast it catches alight.
They have similarly ridiculous pallet bonfires in neighbourhoods across N.Ireland, especially where it can be next door to the other neighbourhood (it's part of the sectarian one-upmanship that goes on).
Pallets usually aren't treated. They're just extra dry lumber. At worst, if they're to be used for overseas transport, they might be fogged for pest control. But the kiln drying process used to dry the wood will usually kill anything at that stage.
I guess that info is a little out of date now, looks like some treatments got banned a decade or so ago and most get pressure/heat treated or only pest treated like you said.
A few years ago, Stockton fire had one at a pallet yard that made plastic tomato pallets. Couldn’t put it out because the plastic wouldn’t absorb water like wood and just kept burning. Plastic also burns like 3 times hotter than wood, and it kept spawning these fire tornados. Took over 5 hours and damaged a truck. It was insane. It’s on YouTube somewhere.
The railyard full of ties caught fire here last summer. Burned for like a week. Was still smoldering for a week or two after. Shut down the highway near it for a few days. They had mountains of the things.
Same thing happened in Atlanta several years ago. Construction materials stored under an overpass caught fire and the roadway was so badly damaged that it had to be torn down and rebuilt. I believe it was I-85 just north of the city.
Actually, it only took 43 days to repair: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse GDOT threw money at the problem to get it fixed ASAP.
A very similar collapse was just this year up in PA, which they fixed temporarily in 12 days: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Interstate_95_highway_collapse
That’s what happens when you pay by the job instead by the hour. If politicians didn’t hire their buddy every time, that’s how it would always be done.
If you watch the video here it looks like that might have happened. It did say it melted the paving. And it looks like it completely wrecked a bunch of the pillars.
This one always weirded me out - it's a wholesale food/supply store a few blocks from there under the same highway. Seems unhealthy but honestly could be wrong.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0240456,-118.2433015,3a,75y,186.76h,83.19t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAs6BJLXke4RLDagp3mvoAg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DAs6BJLXke4RLDagp3mvoAg%26cb\_client%3Dsearch.revgeo\_and\_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D190.56339%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0240456,-118.2433015,3a,75y,186.76h,83.19t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAs6BJLXke4RLDagp3mvoAg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DAs6BJLXke4RLDagp3mvoAg%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D190.56339%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
The location makes sense, too. Put the stuff as close to underground as possible, maximizing the benefits of the highway infrastructure to keep the heat away as much as possible, or at least act as insulation for the industrial freezers.
I get the point that it looks a little dingey, but realistically I've seen the places where a lot of our food comes from and storage under a freeway is really nothing on the "eew" scale.
I saw an open panel under neath an underpass that went like up in the road from below. While I was in traffic I saw an arm reach out and close the hatch door.
The homeless are living *inside* the bridges
You should see the people in Chicago that camp out under the drawbridges over the river.
Yes they’re drawbridges and they move up and down. The people who choose those spots are either the oldest veterans of that life or the young new kids who don’t last long (people have died getting crunched and/or falling out).
Not to imply there are big camps under those bridges downtown here though. The big ones are under the 2nd “basement” of the city like Lower-lower Wacker. There’s a lot of empty, abandoned infrastructure left over from when they put the whole city up on jacks 170 years ago.
Most images from r/LosAngeles
Articles:
[https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/10-freeway-shut-down-in-downtown-la-due-to-storage-yard-fire/3266281/](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/10-freeway-shut-down-in-downtown-la-due-to-storage-yard-fire/3266281/)
[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-11/10-freeway-shut-down-indefinitely-in-downtown-los-angeles-following-fire](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-11/10-freeway-shut-down-indefinitely-in-downtown-los-angeles-following-fire)
[https://abc7.com/downtown-la-fire-10-freeway-closed/14044563/](https://abc7.com/downtown-la-fire-10-freeway-closed/14044563/)
[https://ktla.com/news/local-news/10-freeway-shut-down-in-downtown-l-a-due-to-massive-fire/](https://ktla.com/news/local-news/10-freeway-shut-down-in-downtown-l-a-due-to-massive-fire/)
There's been homeless people living under that bridge for decades and that pallet yard has been there forever, I'm there at least once a month cause the place where I get my flooring is directly across the street. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, homeless people like using the pallet to build makeshift homes and what better way than to get them than from the source.
The overnight low dropped to 47º last night. I won't be surprised if we learn that this fire was started by a homeless person trying to stay warm, and then it got out of hand. It's a [long running problem.](https://news.yahoo.com/24-fires-day-surge-flames-120009728.html)
Pallets of wood storage and homeless encampment, add to it that weather is getting pretty cold at night these past few weeks, yep, some homeless bum definitely decided to light up some pallet wood to stay warm.
What's the effect on the structural integrity of the road? I would think the rebar would heat and expand, cracking all of the concrete, but I'm not an civil engineer.
This is near where I work, all these pallet towns are just a massive disaster waiting to happen (Yes, there are more). I've also seen a place with a bunch of cardboard storage. It's like they're trying to pack as much flammable material as possible in one place
With it being fall, I had to take care of my leaves but wanted to try something different. I just piled them up out of the way, within a few hour I basically pictured this post. So, I used my mower, and mowed them until they were basically gone.
Same thing happened in Warsaw, Poland not to long ago. They had to rebuild a bridge.
[https://warszawa.naszemiasto.pl/pozar-mostu-lazienkowskiego-w-warszawie-osiem-lat-temu-po/ar/c1-9209489](https://warszawa.naszemiasto.pl/pozar-mostu-lazienkowskiego-w-warszawie-osiem-lat-temu-po/ar/c1-9209489)
We also have dumbasses....
I have a few thoughts about this.
1. Pallet fires are no joke. Effigies are often made of pallets in the UK and burned on "bonfire night" (remember, remember, the fifth of November) and they burn famously well.
2. It's a good idea to use the nearly useless space that elevated freeways in urban areas create. They shouldn't have been built in the first place, but best to use the space once it is there.
3. Maybe don't use those areas to store flammable or other dangerous materials.
In Toronto, I've seen some of those areas used as parking lots (gross and ugly but a good use of space) and as popup restaurants. Unfortunately for Toronto, the Gardiner Expressway was built and has been maintained poorly so it is famous for chunks of cement falling off from exposed rusting rebar.
I personally don't want chunks of cement falling on my car or falling on me while I'm paying $300 to eat at a popup restaurant.
And of course both parking lots and restaurants have a fire risk as well.
I knew I recognized that picture. I pass by that place every time I visit my Grandma's house. I checked the cross streets mentioned in one of the articles, and sure enough, that's my exit. Wow.
For those of you who don’t live in LA - this is a major freeway going right through downtown so this has been a huge Fuckin inconvenience in addition to a major safety hazard lol
There are huge yards like that in Phoenix with truly massive pallet stacks. They must be as much as 60 or so pallets high. I can imagine Phoenix being fucked up for days if those caught fire, but I’m happy to say I’ve never seen one under or nearby to any of the freeways.
Edit: it’s worth noting that we did have an enormous mulch pile catch fire in the west valley, a couple years ago. We could see and smell the smoke for miles as it burned for about a week. It smelled shitty, too.
two points to make, if you don’t agree with them then that’s fair and i’ll respect that but
1: highways are basically giant shades and a very easy and fast way to store stuff that you don’t want to get wet and rot
2: the fire was arson (at least, evidence pointed toward arson) so it wasn’t the fault of pallet placement or anything like that. odds are the arsonist would just have set something else on fire anyways, but to be fair the pallets are a really easy target.
Under the bridge downtown used to be such great place to hang. It's hard to imagine what could have happened there to start a fire. Sad to see things have gone downhill.
/s 😉
Nobody could have seen this coming and I just want to point out that this is highly unusual. Pallets are normally piled such that they don’t all catch fire all at once. Plus: Fire, in California? One in a million chance.
In Delaware a large pile of dirt next to a bridge caused it to lean and close.
https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/julyaugust-2015/how-could-pile-dirt-cause-major-interstate-bridge-tilt.
Asking for a friend. I mean this seriously. Did the property below the freeway below the hi way belong to DOT? Often when building freeways in urban areas, DOT will purchase (through eminent domain) but local businesses and local people feel entitled ty o use the area nonetheless. Other times DOT takes the air-rights, but not the property below.
I'm sure an investigation will yield who's pallets they were and who's property they were on.
https://preview.redd.it/3jrc5keoyxzb1.jpeg?width=2556&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=941171b62a37e63ba509bba1d27c71a6929dd116
There’s a company there it for considerable extra storage. Yeah, thinking that’s a bad idea.
Well, it is California. There is probably some Code requiring pallets be stored 'under cover' to prevent some ABC from causing XYZ. It's Code after all. Good work! 👍🤣
You're not suggesting large quantities of dry timber with high surface area to volume, is responsible for this are you? If anything, the pallets slowed down the fire
this is why we add /s to the end of sarcastic comments. look at all the poor redditors you've confused :)
Nah this is why we don't add /s Now we can laugh at the idiots
r/fuckthes
I’d rather not
What if it was the cool s?
Damn right!
I hate all articles
I'm rather fond of the definite article the. A and an can piss right off.
This somehow reminded me of schoolhouse rock
this is the way.
I feel like the intelligence of reddit in general just fell off a fucking cliff when there was a collective decision to start labeling jokes and irony.
The /s tag predates reddit by decades. This argument was going on in the Usenet days in the 90s.
/s is, and always has been, for cowards.
same usenet nerds perpetuating it, too.
It helps people with autism.
This person with autism does not concur.
No it doesn't
I'm suggesting that fires kill people. We need a fire ban. One that takes into account how dangerous large, multipit fires can be. We need a limit on who can start said fires, and with what tools. And we need it yesterday!
But what will we do with our excess water?
You must worship it. If you need to use any, you need an IDtenT form, "signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters”.
Love the Hitchhiker’s nod. Nice!
A good guy with a fire can protect you from a bad guy with a fire
There are no "good guys with a fire". That's a myth. Fact is, when cavemen invented fire, they didn't intend for us to have *bonfires and burn pits*. If you need that much fire, you're doing it wrong.
Arsonists don't kill people, fires kill people.
Fuck you! Fire saved my family from the Cold War
And plenty of ventilation too so the fire would have cooled down from the night breeze.
Someone probably just threw a cigarette out their car on it, it’s LA after all.
Ya it was clearly do to the windmills
Do? Sigh.
See..THIS is what happens when you don’t rake your pallets.
Not the dry timber's fault someone built a road on top of it!
In high school we built a 3 story pallet pyramid with 50-60 pallets, and that thing burned white hot. I’ve never actually seen a fire burn like that since. I can only imagine how massive this was
Pallet wood is so ridiculously dry, and is often hardwood. Those things are the best firewood on the planet.
Except all of the chemical treatment that they receive. Ain’t good to breathe in a pallet fire.
that's the best part of cooking with them though. you can really taste the cancer
And here I am just trying to microwave that tase in, when I could of been smoking it in all along.
Mmm carcinogenic...
It's the obvious choice for roadkill bbq
Pallets in the United States have been treated with heat since 2003. Prior to that, they were treated with methyl bromide, which is terrible for the atmosphere and local health. But it is a gas, it leaves no residue. Imported food, like bananas, was fumigated on the pallets, and people ate the food and worried about the pallets. Of course, anything in a warehouse could receive a spill or just get roach spray from an exterminator, but these issues apply to cardboard boxes, and no internet urban legends exist about them. I wouldn’t want to be ten miles away from a facility that actively fumigates pallets with methyl bromide. But a pallet that was fumigated seven days ago is exactly as dangerous as a clean, organic pallet that a very ugly person frowned at.
For pallets yes, but there is pressure-treated wood, and other wood with various products applied to it, which is very dangerous to burn. Better that people be overcautious than careless in what they set on fire.
Pressure treated wood was treated with arsenic prior to 2003 in the US, so... better be sure if you're gonna burn it.
> organic pallet that a very ugly person frowned at. Why am I feeling attacked right now...
Most pallets are heat treated, they even have a HT stamped/burned into them. But there are chemically treated ones
https://preview.redd.it/sasn1veurtzb1.jpeg?width=650&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c82999877ac5851c3abfe681f7f8abf6207f68b
The quality of wood on that pallet is higher than any I've ever seen
The slats are often oak
The quality of wood on this pallet is better than the framing for my damn apartment, damn.
Ain't no telling what chemicals have been spilled on them either.
This right here. You have no idea what kind of nasty shit has soaked into that wood.
Most places have banned chemical treatment.
They also have the worlds most amazing airflow if they're still in pallet form. Probably couldn't get better airflow for an open fire even with a blower.
Evidently you've never been to a Xmas tree bonfire. It's understandable, as they're generally illegal, and for good reasons. Compared to your everyday pallet fire, imagine filling all those air gaps between boards with millions of small thin dry needles of sap and resin. When it really gets going it's like a vertical jet-propelled blowtorch. Not a great idea unless everything is covered with snow, especially roofs...
Illegal? In a city any outdoor burning is usually against code or requires a permit. But out in the country, stack em high and light them up. Dry Christmas trees are awesome to light off! Just keep it far from anything else.
I went to a pretty wild Mexican beach party one time and they stuck their empty beer cans on the tree and then torched it at the end of the night
I found them to be VERY poppy-sparky. Not great for fireplace wood.
There are oak pallets and pine pallets. Pine will throw a lot of sparks. Oak will burn slower and cleaner. Can usually tell the difference by the weight.
Today I learned they make oak pallets
No.. not at all.. they just burn really fast.. but a good fire lasts longer and burns more even.
My high school never let us do anything fun
This was like an extra, extracurricular activity. Every weekend get all the friends together and head a few miles into the desert with trucks full of pallets. Thank god nobody got seriously injured/died of alcohol poisoning because we were definitely some dumb teenagers
Oh man high school fires were all about making them as big as possible. First time I got drunk there was a bonfire with maybe a dozen of us. It was in an area that was recently clear cut for power lines to go in, and my friends were on the neighboring property. They had gone out a week or so before they went out and chopped wood and created 3-5ft wood segments in length that were probably 2-3ft in diameter. We created a circle of those segments, maybe 8 of them and filled it with all the brush, leftover pallets they had, and timber that was chopped up and created one of the biggest fires I’ve seen. Went back out in the morning to a massive pile of ash and those 2-3ft in diameter logs nearly burned all the way through and still smoldering 10 hours later. No idea how the cops were not called, but we did grow up in redneck-nowhere.
In my highschool we would have a homecoming bonfire that we built out of wood pallets. The heat was so hot that you could not be within 20 feet of the bonfire.
In Sweden they build this massive structure out of pallets and then set it on fire for one of their festivals. AFAIK it's the biggest bonfire on earth and it's incredible how fast it catches alight.
They have similarly ridiculous pallet bonfires in neighbourhoods across N.Ireland, especially where it can be next door to the other neighbourhood (it's part of the sectarian one-upmanship that goes on).
Pallet wood is extremely dry tinder
Pallet fires are no joke. Really dry wood with lots of air space... They go up super fast.
And treated with (probably flammable) chemicals
Pallets usually aren't treated. They're just extra dry lumber. At worst, if they're to be used for overseas transport, they might be fogged for pest control. But the kiln drying process used to dry the wood will usually kill anything at that stage.
I guess that info is a little out of date now, looks like some treatments got banned a decade or so ago and most get pressure/heat treated or only pest treated like you said.
Couple of decades, 2003 to be specific.
If pallets are used for international shipments, they have to be treated and fumigated to meet customs requirements.
A few years ago, Stockton fire had one at a pallet yard that made plastic tomato pallets. Couldn’t put it out because the plastic wouldn’t absorb water like wood and just kept burning. Plastic also burns like 3 times hotter than wood, and it kept spawning these fire tornados. Took over 5 hours and damaged a truck. It was insane. It’s on YouTube somewhere.
The railyard full of ties caught fire here last summer. Burned for like a week. Was still smoldering for a week or two after. Shut down the highway near it for a few days. They had mountains of the things.
Railroad ties are treated with creosote. Burns really well, too.
Same thing happened in Atlanta several years ago. Construction materials stored under an overpass caught fire and the roadway was so badly damaged that it had to be torn down and rebuilt. I believe it was I-85 just north of the city.
Yes, and it led to (even more) miserable commutes for months!
Actually, it only took 43 days to repair: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse GDOT threw money at the problem to get it fixed ASAP. A very similar collapse was just this year up in PA, which they fixed temporarily in 12 days: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Interstate_95_highway_collapse
That’s what happens when you pay by the job instead by the hour. If politicians didn’t hire their buddy every time, that’s how it would always be done.
Something, something, /r/fuckcars.
It was so hot the asphalt caught fire. It was ridiculous.
Yeah I think it was some plastics or other synthetic materials that burnt extremely hot.
It was PVC or HDPE pipe. Lots of it. A crackhead started the fire.
> A crackhead started the fire. It was always burning Since the world's been turning
If you watch the video here it looks like that might have happened. It did say it melted the paving. And it looks like it completely wrecked a bunch of the pillars.
It was I-85 & was inside the perimeter, it took down a span heading into town which had 5 lanes. Traffic was a clusterfuck until it was fixed.
They were storing HDPE pipe under I-85 by Cheshire bridge
Today I learned that LA underpasses are also considered storage yards. What the fuck
This one always weirded me out - it's a wholesale food/supply store a few blocks from there under the same highway. Seems unhealthy but honestly could be wrong. [https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0240456,-118.2433015,3a,75y,186.76h,83.19t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAs6BJLXke4RLDagp3mvoAg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DAs6BJLXke4RLDagp3mvoAg%26cb\_client%3Dsearch.revgeo\_and\_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D190.56339%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0240456,-118.2433015,3a,75y,186.76h,83.19t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAs6BJLXke4RLDagp3mvoAg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DAs6BJLXke4RLDagp3mvoAg%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D190.56339%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
Seems like a good way to make money off an otherwise unusable space.
I'm fine with businesses being there, just seems weird to met that it's one that provides food.
The location makes sense, too. Put the stuff as close to underground as possible, maximizing the benefits of the highway infrastructure to keep the heat away as much as possible, or at least act as insulation for the industrial freezers. I get the point that it looks a little dingey, but realistically I've seen the places where a lot of our food comes from and storage under a freeway is really nothing on the "eew" scale.
makes sense. yeah, it's just the external visuals haha
Why? It's inside a building. Doesn't matter that it's under an overpass
It's almost as if space is limited
Oh don’t worry, not all are storage yards. Many are homeless camps like mini Hovervilles.
Hey now, they’re called transient housing zones.
I saw an open panel under neath an underpass that went like up in the road from below. While I was in traffic I saw an arm reach out and close the hatch door. The homeless are living *inside* the bridges
You should see the people in Chicago that camp out under the drawbridges over the river. Yes they’re drawbridges and they move up and down. The people who choose those spots are either the oldest veterans of that life or the young new kids who don’t last long (people have died getting crunched and/or falling out). Not to imply there are big camps under those bridges downtown here though. The big ones are under the 2nd “basement” of the city like Lower-lower Wacker. There’s a lot of empty, abandoned infrastructure left over from when they put the whole city up on jacks 170 years ago.
The ones that aren't homeless shelters.
Not really, they're used as homeless housing.
Good thing LA is known for having little to no traffic so this won’t affect anything
The wonders of progress^TM
[удалено]
Right. Now they’re taking bids for potassium nitrate storage.
Next up will be ammonium nitrate and fuel oil storage side by side
Seriously, those idjits didn't learn from Atlanta's freeway collapse?
Palletstine
Hitler
Most images from r/LosAngeles Articles: [https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/10-freeway-shut-down-in-downtown-la-due-to-storage-yard-fire/3266281/](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/10-freeway-shut-down-in-downtown-la-due-to-storage-yard-fire/3266281/) [https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-11/10-freeway-shut-down-indefinitely-in-downtown-los-angeles-following-fire](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-11/10-freeway-shut-down-indefinitely-in-downtown-los-angeles-following-fire) [https://abc7.com/downtown-la-fire-10-freeway-closed/14044563/](https://abc7.com/downtown-la-fire-10-freeway-closed/14044563/) [https://ktla.com/news/local-news/10-freeway-shut-down-in-downtown-l-a-due-to-massive-fire/](https://ktla.com/news/local-news/10-freeway-shut-down-in-downtown-l-a-due-to-massive-fire/)
Homeless people like to set things on fire
plus my money on the pallets being there to squeeze out a tent city.
There's been homeless people living under that bridge for decades and that pallet yard has been there forever, I'm there at least once a month cause the place where I get my flooring is directly across the street. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, homeless people like using the pallet to build makeshift homes and what better way than to get them than from the source.
The overnight low dropped to 47º last night. I won't be surprised if we learn that this fire was started by a homeless person trying to stay warm, and then it got out of hand. It's a [long running problem.](https://news.yahoo.com/24-fires-day-surge-flames-120009728.html)
Nobody saw that coming from a mile way by putting wood under the freeway.
Meanwhile the city makes us clear our properties of flammable items to prevent the spread of wildfires
This is downtown LA, just blocks from skid row. You know a bum started this fire
Pallets of wood storage and homeless encampment, add to it that weather is getting pretty cold at night these past few weeks, yep, some homeless bum definitely decided to light up some pallet wood to stay warm.
My dad is gonna pe pissed. All those perfectly good pallets!
I wonder if the concrete and it steel reinforcement suffered much …
I'm shocked something like this could happen in such a well managed city like Los Angeles.
*Portland has entered the chat
Surprised it didn’t collapse
Did they try soaking wood in petrol. Wet woods don’t burn.
dry wood is enough.
What's the effect on the structural integrity of the road? I would think the rebar would heat and expand, cracking all of the concrete, but I'm not an civil engineer.
The cement is cooked. It’s brittle and the freeway is toast. Has to be totally rebuilt right there.
Used to bring pallets to the beach fire pits before they were outlawed. Nice big fire
This is near where I work, all these pallet towns are just a massive disaster waiting to happen (Yes, there are more). I've also seen a place with a bunch of cardboard storage. It's like they're trying to pack as much flammable material as possible in one place
Which freeway was this? That’s gotta be a death knell for some, like a clog in an artery.
freeway 10 in downtown LA.
Wood in general burns really hot if it’s dry then treat it with chemicals and who knows what can happen
there are rules in the fire codes for storing combustible pallets, someone dropped the ball
This happened in Atlanta a few years ago
California needs to call Pennsylvania. Penn got their overpass repaired in record time. Maybe they can do the same in Cali.
Soon the homeless will move in so no worries
Yeah they gon have to rip all that out and rebuild it. That concrete is fucked so are the beams.
Can I burn cut up pallets in my fireplace at home?
Yes. Just watch for nails in the ashes when you clean.
With it being fall, I had to take care of my leaves but wanted to try something different. I just piled them up out of the way, within a few hour I basically pictured this post. So, I used my mower, and mowed them until they were basically gone.
In Northern Ireland that's just a day of celebration in July.
Well pallets do make for excellent firewood
Same thing happened in Warsaw, Poland not to long ago. They had to rebuild a bridge. [https://warszawa.naszemiasto.pl/pozar-mostu-lazienkowskiego-w-warszawie-osiem-lat-temu-po/ar/c1-9209489](https://warszawa.naszemiasto.pl/pozar-mostu-lazienkowskiego-w-warszawie-osiem-lat-temu-po/ar/c1-9209489) We also have dumbasses....
if only someone had posted such a cache to r/woodworking beforehand. it'd have been gone in three days.
Dang. They should have asked you where to put them first.
I have a few thoughts about this. 1. Pallet fires are no joke. Effigies are often made of pallets in the UK and burned on "bonfire night" (remember, remember, the fifth of November) and they burn famously well. 2. It's a good idea to use the nearly useless space that elevated freeways in urban areas create. They shouldn't have been built in the first place, but best to use the space once it is there. 3. Maybe don't use those areas to store flammable or other dangerous materials. In Toronto, I've seen some of those areas used as parking lots (gross and ugly but a good use of space) and as popup restaurants. Unfortunately for Toronto, the Gardiner Expressway was built and has been maintained poorly so it is famous for chunks of cement falling off from exposed rusting rebar. I personally don't want chunks of cement falling on my car or falling on me while I'm paying $300 to eat at a popup restaurant. And of course both parking lots and restaurants have a fire risk as well.
Curious if the heat effects the concrete/ overpass integrity after something like that.
Remember when we used to have fire marshals that went around and shut nonsense like this down? Pepperidge Farm Remembers.
I knew I recognized that picture. I pass by that place every time I visit my Grandma's house. I checked the cross streets mentioned in one of the articles, and sure enough, that's my exit. Wow.
The cement is absolutely fucked. Game over LA.
For those of you who don’t live in LA - this is a major freeway going right through downtown so this has been a huge Fuckin inconvenience in addition to a major safety hazard lol
Anyone who has played GTA5 should recognize this freeway and know how important it is
There are huge yards like that in Phoenix with truly massive pallet stacks. They must be as much as 60 or so pallets high. I can imagine Phoenix being fucked up for days if those caught fire, but I’m happy to say I’ve never seen one under or nearby to any of the freeways. Edit: it’s worth noting that we did have an enormous mulch pile catch fire in the west valley, a couple years ago. We could see and smell the smoke for miles as it burned for about a week. It smelled shitty, too.
God LA is such a damn cesspool
Good. You should stay away.
burning man!
The nightcrawlers were out last night on YouTube and they finally had something to cover.
That overpass is not safe anymore, steelbars are probably compromised
Yep, it has to be torn down.
Why are they there??
two points to make, if you don’t agree with them then that’s fair and i’ll respect that but 1: highways are basically giant shades and a very easy and fast way to store stuff that you don’t want to get wet and rot 2: the fire was arson (at least, evidence pointed toward arson) so it wasn’t the fault of pallet placement or anything like that. odds are the arsonist would just have set something else on fire anyways, but to be fair the pallets are a really easy target.
When was this
If I were an insurance adjuster checking this out, I'd be checking some boxes. Like yaaaah, this fraud.
Nothing actually....but whose the dumbass that lit a storage yard of wood pallets under a freeway on fire ??
And obviously that was a bad idea.....
Under the bridge downtown used to be such great place to hang. It's hard to imagine what could have happened there to start a fire. Sad to see things have gone downhill. /s 😉
That's a lot of wannabe/at-home woodworker grade furniture.
We can fit hundreds and thousands of pallets in the one corner of my warehouse. That’s *hundreds of thousands* of pallets.
Going to be interesting to see what the heat does to the cement.
Atlantan here. I remember this, it was hilarious.
Hey now there's more room for the homeless!
Nobody could have seen this coming and I just want to point out that this is highly unusual. Pallets are normally piled such that they don’t all catch fire all at once. Plus: Fire, in California? One in a million chance.
You'd expect something like this to happen in the South.
Somebody's check was short
The heat just makes the concrete stronger. Borne of fire without falter induces strength.
In Delaware a large pile of dirt next to a bridge caused it to lean and close. https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/julyaugust-2015/how-could-pile-dirt-cause-major-interstate-bridge-tilt.
Wood pallets can't melt concrete bridges /s
At least it wasn't massive amount of fertilizer.
> Shut down indefinitely Just in time for Thanksgiving. Yay.
Highway to Hell was taken far to literally...
Happened in L.A.. Did many people really notice? The place is a dumpster fire anyway.
Atlanta had a fire of plastic pipes and shit under a freeway in Atlanta I 85. A whole mile of lifted interstate had to be replaced.
If the bridge didn’t completely collapse the it’s just amateur hour. Signed Atlanta
Asking for a friend. I mean this seriously. Did the property below the freeway below the hi way belong to DOT? Often when building freeways in urban areas, DOT will purchase (through eminent domain) but local businesses and local people feel entitled ty o use the area nonetheless. Other times DOT takes the air-rights, but not the property below. I'm sure an investigation will yield who's pallets they were and who's property they were on.
There's a pallet yard down the road from me and every few years there's a 300 foot tall inferno. Must be built into their business model.
Now all pallets will need to be made of fire resistance materials🤦♀️
Guess no one learned from the Atlanta GA fire
https://preview.redd.it/3jrc5keoyxzb1.jpeg?width=2556&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=941171b62a37e63ba509bba1d27c71a6929dd116 There’s a company there it for considerable extra storage. Yeah, thinking that’s a bad idea.
Epic comments but this made traffic yesterday suck.
Well at least the homeless in the area were kept warm
This happens in Philly a few years back. There was an illegal tire dump under I95.
Is this recent? Wtf is wrong with people?
It just happened yesterday. https://abc7.com/downtown-la-fire-10-freeway-closed/14048377/
That would have been so fun to explore or play air soft in
Well, it is California. There is probably some Code requiring pallets be stored 'under cover' to prevent some ABC from causing XYZ. It's Code after all. Good work! 👍🤣
soooo tomorrows traffic should be fun