If this crack-head had gotten arrested, three children would still have their father and a wife would still have her husband. Andymoon, and others who think drug users dont need to be seperated from society, can you comment on how many more innocent deaths will occur under your proposed programs? http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3050715 Crack addict admits he lit deadly blaze He says he 'didn't do it on purpose'; charges pending in fireman's death By BILL MURPHY Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle SEE IT NOW A crack addict has confessed to starting the house blaze that killed a Houston firefighter, claiming a small fire he lit so he could see his crack pipe got out of hand, authorities said Monday. Whether the suspect can be charged with arson, murder or some other offense will depend on whether an investigation bears out his claim that he did not mean to torch the house, investigators said. Jack Cordua, 44, might not have admitted to setting the fire at all if he had not become rattled when an accelerant-sniffing dog reacted to his pant leg during questioning Saturday night, police said. "There was an obvious change from being relaxed and confident and 'why are you talking to me' to almost like 'I'll tell you what happened,' " said Houston Police Detective Brian Harris. "His eyes got real wide. He tried to create distance (between him and the dog). ... He blurted out, 'I didn't do it on purpose.' " Cordua, who is homeless, is being held on a cocaine possession charge while investigators decide whether to file additional charges, said HFD Chief Arson Investigator Roy Paul. Fire Capt. Grady Burke, 39, died when an abandoned house in southeast Houston became engulfed in flames early Saturday morning. Cordua told police he did not use an accelerant to start the fire. The question for investigators is whether the dog, a 5-year-old black Labrador named Yoshi, reacted to an accelerant used by Cordua or to some other substance that might have soaked into his pant leg, Paul said. "We are extremely lucky to have Yoshi. She fingered the guy," he said. "This could have gone unsolved." Investigators are conducting lab tests to determine what substance was on Cordua's pants and whether that substance, or any accelerant, was used to start the fire. HFD Fire Capt. Grady Burke If Cordua didn't light the fire with the intention of torching the home, authorities can look into whether they can bring a manslaughter charge, Paul said. His intent in setting the fire "has a huge impact on the nature of the charge. That's why we haven't charged him yet," Paul said. Putting the case together Police have been trying to piece together details about Cordua's life as well as his actions early Saturday. Cordua, a native of Nicaragua, often hung out in the Sunnyside neighborhood where the fire occurred, Paul said. Other crack users sometimes beat up the short, thin man to steal his crack, Paul said. He had a severely separated shoulder when he was picked up Saturday about 5:30 p.m., the result of one or more beatings, Paul said. He also had a bad leg and walked with a cane. He told police that he once worked as a produce distribution manager in South Carolina, but he has been unable to hold a steady job since becoming addicted to crack, Paul said. He occasionally did odd jobs at convenience stores or construction sites in Sunnyside. He often slept in an abandoned home next to the one in the 8500 block of Brandon where Burke died, Paul said. But the windows of that home, he said, were boarded up last week, and Cordua has since stayed elsewhere. He went into the home where he started the fire early Saturday to smoke crack, Harris said. Lost control of fire With items collected from around the house, he lit a fire in an 18-inch glass bowl so he could see what he was doing, Paul said. The fire spread when the bowl broke. Cordua told police he tried to put it out with his hands and later tried to stamp it out, but investigators found no burn marks on his hands and no soot residue on his boots, Paul said. After Burke's death early Saturday, investigators learned from street sources that Cordua often went into the house. A detective spotted him on a Metro bus and detained him. Burke died as he and and several other firefighters were mounting "a quick attack," a technique to get into a fire quickly and put it out before it spreads, Paul said. Burke and the others had approached the fire in an addition at the home's rear when the ceiling fell, trapping Burke, Paul said. The entire house was engulfed quickly, possibly because of a flashover — a rare event that occurs when a fire suddenly receives a burst of oxygen. It also is possible that the fire expanded when the ceiling fell, blowing fire, smoke and air through much of the home, Paul said. Burke is the fifth HFD firefighter to die in the line of duty in five years. Fire Chief Phillip Boriskie went to Burke's Texas City home on Monday and spoke to his widow, Cindy, and his three young children. Boriskie said the department wants the focus this week to be on Burke's valor. In the weeks ahead, HFD officials may examine whether the department, known nationwide as one that engages in aggressive interior firefighting, needs to rethink some of its tactics, Boriskie said.
I'm not for legalizing (not even aware there was a crack lobby), but your argument is kind of silly. I mean, places burn down because of cigarettes all the time. Should we arrest all cigarette smokers?
Every page of the D&D threads has a new post about the "failed drug war." In them, the usual set of characters explain that we should not be wasting police and prison resources on habitual drug users. Instead, they should be forced to join rehab centers. Cigarette smokers dont intentionally light buildings on fire because their judgement is so impared from the effects of cigarettes.
If this is the best reason you can come up with to ban crack, count me in as crack's newest supporter. You know how many innocent firefighters have been killed because of space heaters, cigarettes, camping stoves, candles, etc? How long will the slaughter continue! Ban incendiary devices! Sushi and blankets for all! AHHHH FIRE!!!! FRANKENSTEIN NO LIKE FIRE!!!!!!!!! AHHHHRRRR!!!!
Why don't you just let cops shoot to kill when they see anyone with a lighter? An ounce of prevention (of unintentional fires) is worth a pound of cure.
Please read my previous post This was an intentional fire started due to the impaired judgement of of a crack-head. The items you listed are accidental. The thread isnt about this one incident, just a general question about the drug war. It appears the D&D is dominated by people who favor less police interference with drug users. If this were to happen, would incidents like this go up or down?
The usual arguement by the "legalize it" croud. Are you in favor of criminalizing alcohol or decriminilazing drugs?
Read again. He lit the fire intentially and didnt understand the efffects of an uncontrolled open flame inside a house.
Lighting campfires and cigarrettes is pretty intentional. It's hard to accidentally create an open flame. But anyway, I see, so you are trying the novel tactic of anectdotal cost-benefit analysis by focusing only on one extreme and particular aspect of the cost, viewing it in isolation, and ignoring all else. This is a fantastic way of debating a point to ensure that you never lose, what a great concept, rvolkin. I shall have to remember this tactic as I only have seen it employed about a thousand million times before.
The "extreme" is not the one is the article above but the one in the myriad of andymoon posts. Again, please respond to the question,
Um, people who aren't under the influence of anything start fires and lose control of them all of the time as well. He started the fire in a glass bowl. That doesn't sound like somebody who had no idea what fire could do. Did you even read the article? You make sound like the guy started the fire right on the floor or something. It's a trajedy that this firefighter lost is life and it's made worse by the fact that it was a fire started by some crackhead in an abondoned house, but you using this one incident without even providing similar stories or statistics makes your point all the weaker. The fire was an accident, the same as somebody falling asleep with a cigarette in their hand and starting a blaze. There are far more stories about people falling asleep while smoking than crackheads starting fires in bowls. So if you really care about saving people's lives, you'd snuff out the problem that has caused the most damage: cigarettes.
Rvolkin, blessed is the ignorant one, I shall drop some science on you and answer your request: The answer, my child, is yes. If people started fewer fires, it is inherently less likely that firefighters would perish in fires.
Please re-read the question. You might want to pick up the following book at your local bookstore Middle School Mastery Skills Reading Comprehension
What is Fire? The ancient Greeks considered fire one of the major elements in the universe, alongside water, earth and air. This grouping makes intuitive sense: You can feel fire, just like you can feel earth, water and air. You can also see it and smell it, and you can move it from place to place. But fire is really something completely different. Earth, water and air are all forms of matter -- they are made up of millions and millions of atoms collected together. Fire isn't matter at all. It's a visible, tangible side effect of matter changing form -- it's one part of a chemical reaction. Typically, fire comes from a chemical reaction between oxygen in the atmosphere and some sort of fuel (wood or gasoline, for example). Of course, wood and gasoline don't spontaneously catch on fire just because they're surrounded by oxygen. For the combustion reaction to happen, you have to heat the fuel to its ignition temperature. Here's the sequence of events in a typical wood fire: Something heats the wood to a very high temperature. The heat can come from lots of different things -- a match, focused light, friction, lightning, something else that is already burning... When the wood reaches about 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius), the heat decomposes some of the cellulose material that makes up the wood. Some of the decomposed material is released as volatile gases. We know these gases as smoke. Smoke is compounds of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. The rest of the material forms char, which is nearly pure carbon, and ash, which is all of the unburnable minerals in the wood (calcium, potassium, and so on). The char is what you buy when you buy charcoal. Charcoal is wood that has been heated to remove nearly all of the volatile gases and leave behind the carbon. That is why a charcoal fire burns with no smoke. The actual burning of wood then happens in two separate reactions: When the volatile gases are hot enough (about 500 degrees F (260 degrees C) for wood), the compound molecules break apart, and the atoms recombine with the oxygen to form water, carbon dioxide and other products. In other words, they burn. The carbon in the char combines with oxygen as well, and this is a much slower reaction. That is why charcoal in a BBQ can stay hot for a long time. A side effect of these chemical reactions is a lot of heat. The fact that the chemical reactions in a fire generate a lot of new heat is what sustains the fire. Many fuels burn in one step. Gasoline is a good example. Heat vaporizes gasoline and it all burns as a volatile gas. There is no char. Humans have also learned how to meter out the fuel and control a fire. A candle is a tool for slowly vaporizing and burning wax. As they heat up, the rising carbon atoms (as well as atoms of other material) emit light. This "heat produces light" effect is called incandescence, and it is the same kind of thing that creates light in a light bulb. It is what causes the visible flame. Flame color varies depending on what you're burning and how hot it is. Color variation within in a flame is caused by uneven temperature. Typically, the hottest part of a flame -- the base -- glows blue, and the cooler parts at the top glow orange or yellow. In addition to emitting light, the rising carbon particles may collect on surrounding surfaces as soot. The dangerous thing about the chemical reactions in fire is the fact that they are self-perpetuating. The heat of the flame itself keeps the fuel at the ignition temperature, so it continues to burn as long as there is fuel and oxygen around it. The flame heats any surrounding fuel so it releases gases as well. When the flame ignites the gases, the fire spreads. On Earth, gravity determines how the flame burns. All the hot gases in the flame are much hotter (and less dense) than the surrounding air, so they move upward toward lower pressure. This is why fire typically spreads upward, and it's also why flames are always "pointed" at the top. If you were to light a fire in a microgravity environment, say onboard the space shuttle, it would form a sphere! http://people.howstuffworks.com/fire1.htm
