Posted on 06/01/2008 4:05:30 PM PDT by kellynla
Low water pressure hampered efforts today to fight a fire that raged through the Universal Studios backlot in Universal City, destroying a soundstage, the theme park's King Kong attraction, a video vault and sets such as the Courthouse Square seen in "Back to the Future" and the New York street scape from "Bruce Almighty."
As the equivalent of two city blocks burned -- firefighters were still dousing hot spots 10 hours after the blaze began in predawn darkness -- a mushroom-like cloud of smoke drifted over surrounding neighborhoods, raising some health concerns.
A large explosion near the video storage building about 2:30 p.m. left a firefighter and sheriff's deputy with minor injuries, officials said. Four other firefighters suffered minor injuries earlier.
The theme park will not reopen today.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district includes Universal City, said fire officials told him that unusually low water pressure had made the fight more difficult.
"They said the water was coming out of the hoses anemically," he said. "The water pressure is not what it should have been. It's enough of a wake-up call that we need to take another look."
County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman said the park had installed a large-scale sprinkler system after a 1990 blaze, but it didn't seem to work adequately today. Firefighters pulled water from ponds and lakes on the backlot. They also brought in a 6,000-gallon water tender.
"It appears the fire this morning overwhelmed fire protection features," Freeman said. "We're going to readily and quickly reevaluate that and see if that had any impact on the water pressure."
Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge said he also heard about the water-pressure problems.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Don’t worry. It’s just a make-believe fire.
Funny thing is, that fire dumped more crap into the sky (including CO2) than I bet every car within 100 miles of there does over the course of a year. No one will even wimper about the environMENTAL costs of such a blaze.
The reason I ask is that that area is my old stomping grounds. I lived on Aqua Vista, close to Vineland for a few years.
Vineland is a rather long street and I’m not sure where Aqua Vista crosses, but I know the whole street fairly well having spent the last 40 years in the area. I’ve noticed a number of folks mentioning they were close by also. Thanks for the comments.
Whoops. There goes all California’s carbon credits. Isn’t it interesting how ecological disasters hit those states that stand for staying green?
ooops, I meant Aqua Vista not Vineland.
Damn, I havn’t even had a beer today.
Leni
I love that area. I used to ride my motorcycle up in the hills around there right around Lake Hollywood (The one that was in the movie Earthquake) well the dam anyway
Surprisingly, many people who live in the valley or on the edges do not even know it exists.
“Will Universal get awarded an Oscar for special effects?”
Firefighters are out there risking their lives as we speak...
I don’t see anything funny about this
Leni
We’re definitely having ‘small world’ day today. I lived just down the hill from you near Pass and Riverside.
Saw the headline and thought Frank was making a comeback.
OTOH NBC/Universal will be incrementally less able to spew its “progressive” crap into the nation’s media stream for awhile. Now THAT’s what I call an “offset”!
Be quantitive. How many cars are running, in a time average, within 100 miles of that spot? ( Say 1,000,000 ) How much gasoline per car is being burned per hour? ( Say 1 ) How much total gasoline is burned over the course of 8760 hours ? 8,760,000,000 gallons, and I think this is a low-ball. That's about 33 billion cubic decimeters, or cube 320 meters on side, 1000 feet by 1000 feet by 1000 feet. You're saying the Universal Studio fire released more CO2 than burning this much gasoline.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
I have a hard enough time telling people that scientific study has shown that vehicles and industry put more than 100 times more CO2 in the air each year than volcanoes.
I’ve moved, but you could see that sign and the old car-hop lanes from my old dining room window. I ate there more than a few times, but spent most of my ‘dining out’ time across the street at Papoo’s. Among other things, they do great breakfasts.
Ping.
You figure that cars average running 100% of the time. Seems a bit high to me...
It looks like more was damaged or destroyed in today’s Universal Studios fire than anyone previously thought. I’ve learned that Universal Music, which is a completely separate company and owned by Vivendi (which owns 20% of NBC Universal), rents space in the huge video vault housed on the studio lot. But one source tells me that, as a consequence, inside the video vault that was billowing thick black smoke were 1000’s of original Decca, MCA, ABC recording masters from the last century including a wide range of music from Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters to Judy Garland and The Carpenters. “This is a tremendous loss in music history. A very sad day indeed. It’s too bad they saved the videos that they have backups on instead of the master recordings in which they do not, although they may not have had a choice since the fire had already engulfed much of the music side of the vault,” a source just told me. Universal Studios can’t confirm what has been damaged or destroyed music-wise at this point because it doesn’t yet know what exactly was housed in the storage rented to Universal Music.
No, I figured that 1,000,000 was the time average for the number of cars running at any given time. Just a guess, anyway. It seems to jive with the U.S. annual gasoline consumption, as I posted.
... I’m having a hard time trying to find this type of information. By searching on [ automobile census ] I found a NYT archive article saying there were 750,000 cars in the whole country ... it was from 1913 !
Gee I thought I posted it, I don't see it. Anyway, I think my estimate is pretty good, as it comes to about 1/16 the US annual consumption of gasoline.
I do hoot in my compound. At least in my compound I get to get out and breathe sane air.
It’s great that no one was killed in this. From a movie-buff perspective, and as someone who has taken the Universal Hollywood backstage tour several times, I am saddened by the loss of these historical sets, and the archive vault. The courthouse set was seen most famously in “Back to the Future”, but it has been used in many Universal films, from “Psycho” to
“Slap Shot”.
That’s very sad. I hope whoever that quote is from isn’t blaming the FF for not deciding what was worth saving and what wasn’t...
Oh, there were all kinds of selfish quotes floating around yesterday....including all those idiots that were complaining about not getting into UniStudios after 2pm.
Did you get to see the footage of that secondary explosions that injured the FF and deputy? Pieces landed off the lot....it was pretty substantial.
http://www.myfoxla.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=6673541&version=1&locale=EN-US report showing that secondary explosion 8 hours after fire broke out...and prompted the decision not to open the park
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ieKlEB60J43hDZ39AB9VmsPZ72sgD912HMK00
A massive blaze that destroyed part of the back lot at Universal Studios was accidentally ignited by workers using a blowtorch on the roof of a movie set building facade, fire officials said.
Workers had been using the blowtorch early Sunday to heat asphalt shingles to apply to the roof, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Michael Freeman said Monday. They finished around 3 a.m. and followed policy of standing watch for one hour, then left for a break, he said.
Guess those asphalt shingles stay hot longer than one hour.
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