How Much Survived? (Poll)

[Stuff and Things]

Chris' room appears to be in the front of 14 Branchland, at a corner.
The Fire appears to have started in the back-bottom center of the first floor.

Chris himself has said that the Manchester High School set survived, a little melted; this was probably in his room, and it gives us a starting point to determine how hot his room became.

http://news.lugnet.com/technic/?n=6920

Best guess is that his room hit around 300F. That's bad, and it means a lot of things are likely damaged, but;
Paper's ignition temperature is 451F, below that point it appears ages rapidly. Untreated paper yellows after just a few years, in a fire this can happen in a very short period of time; Chris' work may very well be yellowed by age. My thinking is that that paper isn't artistic grade paper and probably doomed anyhow, but Chris' artwork in his room may have the texture of thirty year old letters; the paper has turned brown.

Most of Chris' Plastic is likely in similar shape to his Legos, deformed slightly but still essentially intact.

Clothing is generally designed to be fire resistant. The fire may have actually served a beneficial role, cauterizing Chris' dirty crapped briefs. This isn't hot enough to build fired clay in Chris' pants, but the bacteria are likely dead and the annoying stink compounds are destroyed.

Chris' Sonichu Medallion is made out of Crayola Model Magic; I've dug up what happens to Play-Doh at this temperature:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5031512_bake-playdoh-make-hard.html

Likely outcome: The Sonichu Medallion has turned rock hard and probably cracked in half; this can't survive that temperature.

Consumer electronics: A Computer CPU can hit 212F when in use, and I think most electronics are going to be similiarily resistant to heat. Rubber, involved in coating cables and wires, is often rated to higher tolerances than 300F, which covers cables. 300F is dangerous...but electronics are fairly resistant.

Things put away: If the FIremen appeared after 10 minutes, anything not exposed is likely safe.

Overall, the heat itself is unlikely to have done major damage to Christory.

What about water damage?

Lego is entirely immune.
Chris' Clothes were previously in a poor hygienic state; Dirty water is not the worst thing to have reached them, and most would be better than they've been in years with proper laundering.
Electronics are an obvious vulnerability, but electronics are intended to be used in high humidity conditions and are likely to survive being drenched better than one might expect. While Electronics can't survive immersion, they're designed to handle 100% Humidity and probably rainy conditions. Nintendo, in particular, is known for overengineering its hardware to be particularly robust. Stories of Game Boys surviving a year exposed to the elements or 30' falls are not unknown.

Paper products do less well under water, but that's because the paper itself liquefies and debonds. Sonichu, if it got soaked, is likely to take on Salvador Dali proportions--but Sonichu is five years old and likely buried beneath other stuff that took the hit.

---

This isn't all positives, though;
Possibly in play, and potentially likely, are the results of cleaning chemicals exposed to heat.
Bleach is a chlorine compound, and Chlorine also takes the form of various acids and toxins. If the Bathroom burned downstairs, cleaning compounds went up in flame. This is an irritant minimum and grounds to condemn the property, maximum.

Other bathroom chemicals, like Ammonia, Iodine, and Cleanser are equally dangerous. It might be very unsafe to retrieve Christorical artifacts and they might be abandoned.

There might be a problem with Asbestos, with things like Kaka Makeup or other exotic materials catching fire; there might even be a problem with plastic itself catching fire--but I think most things will have survive at least the fire and water.

But there's another problem of a greater sort. Even if Christory survived the blaze, it might be contaminated with toxins; it might be too much work to save in a house they no longer pay the mortgage on, and there might even be a mental break from what was simply by being forced out of the house. Christory is in mortal peril, because its also unclear that Chris values it anymore. He might very well leave it behind when he and Barb find a new place to live.

We'll see.

You're forgetting the smoke damage. I remember when we had the fire in our house, a lot of the walls were black from the smoke afterwards. Not just streaked but black. And that stuff doesn't come off easily. Carpets will be torn out, wallpaper removed all the fixtures that can't be moved will be cleaned and scrubbed. We still had some items that even though they had been professionally cleaned either still had smoke residue or in the case of a leather jacket I had now looked distressed. So that was a bonus.

There's also the smell from the smoke. That takes a long time to get rid of. Eventually you will get used to it but it can take a couple years to disappear completely.

What should happen next is, assuming they have insurance and they pay out, is a company hired by the insurance company will go in and clean the Chandler residence from top to bottom. This includes not only cleaning but repairing the damage assuming of course that the structure can be repaired.

What will happen is and will need to go through what they can salvage and what they can't. No repairs can be done until what remains of the horde is taken care of. However, what I believe is going to happen is assuming the house is deemed livable, they're going to take all the money they can and not do much in the way of repairs. They might do a superficial clean of the house. Nothing too drastic mind you because that would involve effort. And just let the house continue it's slow decline into entropy.

In the next few years when Borb finally dies, Chris will inherit a house that is effectively worthless. He won't be able to sell it for much, in fact all he'll be able to get is the value of the land which probably won't be that much.

Bob already died.

 

[Julaay]

I'm thinking that a lot of his artwork got burnt. I was saddened by that fact. I'm thinking also the crumplelope is also dust.

 

[Spork]

RE: Manchester High in another part of the house.

All suggestions that this isn't a good barometer in that case are valid, although I think Chris' legos are generally in one portion of his own room. I suspect its 50/50 it was in his room--for the simple reason that putting it somewhere else is going to be physically difficult. We've all seen the inside of 14 Branchland; some rooms are outright inaccessible. Only Chris' room has any space at all--potential where the school could fit.

What we need out of this are two things: knowledge of where in the house it was at the time of the fire, and a better description of the damage it suffered than "melted some". If Chris were to say where it was located at the time of the fire, that would cover it.

But the main problem with processing that suggestion is that we lack hard answers about how hot Chris' room became.

There are some constraints, the front walls didn't burn; the tarp isn't over Chris' room directly but the midsection of his house. But that gives us an upper bound of 650 F.

Going by the photos of the exterior, there was burn damage to the northwest corner of Chris's room. That's the only part of the house where we can see visible burn damage, as far as we can tell. What would that imply about the heat in Chris's room at the time? As for the hole in the roof, we probably won't know where it is unless we get a fire report, an eyewitness account, or someone scrutinizes the news report hard enough.

 

[Blue Max]

This thread has grown quite large since I've been at work.

@Smoke Damage: It's ugly, its toxic, and it won't come out. CWC says that the fire burned for 10 minutes or so--but there is one thing we don't see, and that's any kind of smoke trail immediately around Chris' window--and we've got the photography to prove it. We know Chris' window was open when the firemen got inside using a ladder; if Chris' room was thick with smoke, it would show.

Smoke damage is likely substantial inside 14 Branchland; but the wall of originals are plastic covered paper or even laminated paper. Plastic can survive some pretty harsh cleaning methods and if that's the worst that happens they're salvageable. Chris' clothes are, again, the most afflicted portion of his life; but, he's already crapped his briefs. We might miss things like the Classic; they will almost certainly not be cleaned if they were recoverable.

DIscolored Electronics aren't likely to be a large deal; and they're fairly robust.
All told, the smoke damage doesn't look that serious given the lack of any smoke stains around CWC's open windows. The Firemen broke the roof perhaps for that very purpose.

Carpets and clothes weren't really that central to our Christological narrative, although their loss is quite likely. Artwork is fragile against smoke...if that smoke has access to it, which is might well not. The Sonichu comics are five years old, which is their best protection. Buried under other crap, that other crap takes the hit. I really can't believe something five years old and not on display is likely to be sitting around on top of giant piles of stuff. Some art might be lost, but it's going to be either stuff he's made recently (which is probably lost forever) or art that he's most proud of (Sonichu #1?). The vast majority won't be open air, and probably face less damage. Remember again, the time frame is around 10 minutes.

@Heat/Cold Shock:

This is a interesting way to damage Glass, Clay and other brittle substances. Hard, inflexible materials crack and break when they are stressed in this way. But glass and Ceramics aren't common materials in Chris' room. It's an alternate bad fate for the Sonichu Medallions, but they might already be done for.

@The Temperature Calculation:

650F maximum is a fairly hard figure, the wood walls around Chris' room didn't burn at all, so things could not have gotten that hot. Thinking about this more, at least Chris' class ring, anything inside a fire safe or hard clay/metal/glass items would survive that. Sonichu would be toast; indeed, Chris would probably have jumped out his window as that's death in seconds; of course, Chris started the fire in the downstairs bathroom.

This is the Broil Setting on an Oven; the melting point of Lead, and a wipeout of all but the metal, glass and possibly protected items. If Chris' room hit this temperature, that's Most Destroyed on the poll. The Amethyst in Chris' class ring melts at 3,000F, so I don't understand how "Everything" is even possible.

300F is a best guess using the Lego Highschool, and I stand with my prediction upthread that it is a bad but not unsurvivable temperature. If Chris extracted his PS3 or other electronics from his room, these are going to be unprotected (have nothing to shield them from that heat) and so they can't get much hotter and live.

And yes, since consumer electronics get warm internally, their plastic will be more resistant to heat. Not enough to withstand 650F or anything near it, but probably 300F, particularly for a short period of time. 300F for 10 minutes won't cook a Pizza, let alone a PS3.

But this sort of analysis is clearly second to seeing the documents, not that it answers one great related question:

How interested and dedicated are CWC/Barb in rebuilding a house they don't own? Do they walk away from the hoard and their past life with monies from Insurance? Are they even interested in repairing, cleaning, reupholstering this house and salvaging what they can? This isn't Chris' game consoles (which may be his most precious possessions) but a window on his life he might want closed forever. If Chris walks away, the abandonment of Sonichu and his Anchuent Quest is realized.

Whatever the fire does, they need to ask themselves whether they want to fix it.

 

[Greg Sestero]

Whatever the fire does, they need to ask themselves whether they want to fix it.

I agree. It'd be nice if a lot survived, but if the Chandlers aren't going to be able or willing to make 14 Branchland habitable again (relatively speaking) and repair smoke and heat damage, it might not make a lot of difference exactly what perished in the fire and what didn't.

 

[blackie toy]

I think the big limiting factor in moving back to 14 BLC is going to be how much of the legwork the insurance company will do in arranging repairs. If the Chandlers have to find and hire contractors themselves, and actually directly pay them, it'll never happen. Never. Even if the place only needed about $15K in repairs, it'd never happen.

Because honestly, they're going to get enough of a payout to repair the place.

 

[Right Back Man]

Items in the bathroom (from the recent house tour) include:

Air freshener
Bleach
Shampoo and other soaps
Various plastics (Baskets, toothbrushes, the shower cutain etc.)
Various towels

and more (possibly makeup, more chemicals, other soaps/shampoos, body spray, more plastics and towels and other shit...)


Around it (the hallway ), their are picture frames, towels, bins of random shit, other random shit and more of the hoard.

This leads up to Chris' room. In the front, there are clothes, toys and his video games. Farther away from the door holds the television/consoles, possibly the paper (judging by some notebooks next to his bed) on and his legos.

His video games, clothes, miscellaneous toys and couch are probably trash now.

As for the yard, also based on the recent house tour, there seem to be a few lawnmowers out there. Probably unusable, but the gas inside them is probably why his front yard is now a garden of char.

The rest of the house probably has minor damage accept for a hoarded-out room near the bathroom.

That is my less-sciencey theory on the damage. Blue Max did it better.

 

[Holdek]

Science.

I love methodical explanations with numbers and figures. It grounds hypotheses within reasonable boundaries.

Just be careful not to

Spoiler

I looked at the length and direction of the shadows to estimate the date of the video.

Take a look at around 4:05 in the video. There is a pretty good shot of the house across the street. I can see that the shadow cast by the house meets the street at a point in front of a point on the house about three-quarters of the way from left to right (pink lines). Matching those lines up with the overhead shot provided by Google Street View, and using Microsoft Paint to count pixels and Calculator to do some basic trigonometry, I can see that the sun is shining from an angle roughly 7 degrees north of due west (orange line).

Getting the angle of elevation of the sun is a little bit harder. I don't know the heights of any of the objects filmed, so I will have to rely on some guesswork here. It appears the shadow of the house ends near the middle of the street, possibly a little more towards Chris's side. With the sun low in the sky, that is most likely the shadow of the peak of the roof, not the front edge. Using Paint to count pixels again, it is about 88-92 feet from the end of the peak of the roof to the middle of the street, running parallel to the pink line.

Now, to estimate the height of the house. The shadow on the overhead shot looks a little shorter than that of Chris's house, suggesting the the house across the street is a one-story house. 8 feet is typical for the inside walls, but the outside walls are going to be higher. It looks like the ground might be 1 to 1 1/2 feet below floor level on the left side, and the ground slopes down going left to right (see the increasing width of the dark gray foundation). The eaves might be another half foot to foot above ceiling level, and if the roof is a 5/12 pitch (typical) that adds another 6-7 feet to the peak. Also, the ground also appears to slope downward sharply near the road, forming a shallow ditch. I can estimate that the peak of the roof is at least 16 feet higher than the street, and may be as much as 20 feet.

With these figures in mind, I can do trigonometry on Calculator again, and estimate the sun's angle of elevation at between 10 to 13 degrees, the inverse tangent of the height/distance ratio. It's late afternoon in Ruckersville, maybe around 7 p.m.

Using an astronomy simulator, I can now look for the two times of year the sun appears at that position. Using an azimuth of 97 degrees (south=zero in the one I used) and an altitude of 11 1/2 degrees, the two prime dates are April 22 and August 19, although taking into account the possibility of errors in my measurements and conjectures, the actual date might be as much as a week on either side. Now, I don't live in Virginia, but it looks a little bit too lush, green, and overgrown to be April or even early May, so my best guess is that this video was filmed in the second half of August. Unfortunately, I don't know which year!
http://i.imgur.com/OvjsNQL.png
http://i.imgur.com/My1jGzY.png
http://i.imgur.com/VWGREQu.png

It was filmed in May.

 

[Holdek]

In between most and some. Two rooms really tore all to hell (which ones?), some peripheral water damage on neighboring areas (which ones?) and a couple of untouched rooms. Now the question is what was where?

Everything was everywhere.

 

[Backwards Harvester]

The only thing I hope what was burned was DCB or the pet crap. Before joining, I remembered seeing another user post this scenario... only darker version where no one or nothing survived. Much like one of the Asperchu comics predicted him being arrested for attempting to run over my favorite KTA champion, Michael Snyder.

 

[WiseOldBadger]

I suppose the question should be not "how much survived" but how much survived that the Chandlers care about and won't throw out.

Even Barb with her hoarding ways will probably not want burnt and broken Elvis plates or I love Lucy alarm clocks..... right?

 

[LordCustos3]

I suppose the question should be not "how much survived" but how much survived that the Chandlers care about and won't throw out.

Even Barb with her hoarding ways will probably not want burnt and broken Elvis plates or I love Lucy alarm clocks..... right?

You underestimate the "optimism" and "sentimentality" and the....um...."neurotic ass-spazzery" of a hoarder. Barb would keep that Elvis plate even if it was on fire right in her hand.

 

[No Haggle]

Thought it be kinda cool to document if possible, any known items that came out of the fire somewhat unscathed.

And with all these flickr images coming out, maybe they will be easy to spot, like the two below.

First:

Chris' pixelcrap

http://www.sonichu.com/cwcki/Pixelblocks

And then...

CwC...Yep...I'm on TV.

http://www.sonichu.com/cwcki/DVD

So anyway, if you find stuff post it here.

 

[Anchuent Christory]

Chris and Barb.

 

[Optimus Prime]

The violin

 

[No Haggle]

The violin

Should've clarified I meant autistic stuff.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Should've clarified I meant autistic stuff.

Oh, ok.


All of Chris's 11th grade schoolwork.

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

"Surviving" is a very ambiguous term in this case. I mean, we've got "Billboard Person from Melting Chaos," which clearly did not survive the fire.

But Chris held onto it anyway, because Chris.

 

[Hyperion]

His dignity certainly didn't survive the fire, as if he ever had any to begin with.

 

[Jozef]

It's actually a really good thing that DVD was saved, since there were so many family photos on it.
Back when the CWCki was putting together a box to send to Chris and Barb after the fire, someone suggested printing out all the family photos and putting them in an album. If that wasn't done, at least the Chandlers for sure still have some of their photos.
I would have thought the DVD would still be in Chris' room, but I guess he kept it with him in the room where him and Barb hung out, which as I recall, didn't suffer nearly as much fire damage.