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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from the studios of Vermont Public Radio. I'm Jane Lindholm. I host the show. And Melody Beaudet and I listen to all the amazing questions we get from kids all over the world. And we help come up with answers to some of what you've sent us. Now, this is kind of unbelievable to us. But we've been making this show for two and a half years now. And you've sent us about 3,000 questions. OMG! Yeah.
That is amazing, but also a little bit sad to us because there's no way we can answer that many questions. Even if we did an episode every day, we wouldn't get to all of them.
So if you have an idea for other ways we could feature your questions, please let us know. You can write to questions at butwhykids.org. That's also where you can send your questions. Have an adult record you using a smartphone and send the file to that email address, questions at butwhykids.org. We want to know your first name, where you live, and how old you are, and what you're curious about.
In the meantime, we're going to keep answering as many questions as we can. And today we're focusing on questions you have sent us about fire. My name is Lisa Desimore. We're sitting here in the wonderful city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, inside our fire museum.
Philadelphia is actually kind of an important part of the history of firefighting in the United States. Can you tell me a little bit about it? It certainly is. So good old Benjamin Franklin, this is where the very first fire brigade happened. And it was a volunteer brigade at that time? That is correct.
And in a lot of parts of this country, there are still volunteer fire brigades, but this is your job. You do this for a living. That is correct. All over the country, you have what we call paid firefighters, you have volunteer firefighters, and then you have some departments that have combination. We thought it might be a good idea to check in with a firefighter to answer some of your fire questions because a lot of them revolve around what fire is, how it's formed, and how to fight it.
To become a firefighter, there are usually a few steps you need to take. Generally, you have to wait until you're out of high school before you can become a full-fledged firefighter, but some people are junior firefighters while they're still teenagers. You need to be physically fit so you keep your body in good shape because the equipment you carry as a firefighter is really heavy, and it's very tiring to fight a fire, so you want your body in good condition.
You need to learn about how to fight fires and do the other work that firefighters do. So you have a lot of reading and you have to do a lot of training and tests. And sometimes that means going to a special school, an academy, where you learn how to be a firefighter. Some of what you do in the firefighting academy or whenever you're learning and training to be a firefighter is to actually fight fires in controlled environments. That means fires that have been set on purpose so that firefighters can learn how to put them out.
We asked firefighter Lisa to tell us a little bit more about what the job actually is once you've done all that training and become a firefighter. Oh gosh, that's a really big question, but there's all kinds of things that we do do besides just putting out fire. I mean, on a regular basis, we're interacting with the public, with folks for all kinds of emergencies. We have medical emergencies. We have investigations. We have times when we just go to the school and talk to the children as well.
Okay, so let's get to some of our questions because we've got a lot of kids with questions. And several of them want to know just the very basic idea of what are we talking about here? What is fire? Hi, my name is Julie. I'm eight years old. I live in Memphis, Tennessee. And my question is, what is fire made of?
My name is Phineas and I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And my question is, what is fire made out of? Hi, I'm Jasper. I live in Waterbury, Vermont and I want to know how fires are made. My name is Zachary. I'm from Schaumburg, Illinois. I'm five years old. I want to learn about how fire happens.
Okay, so fire is a basic chemical reaction. And from that chemical reaction, we get light and heat. So you need three things for fire. Think of it as a triangle. You need three sides to complete a triangle. Air, number one, specifically the part of air that we call oxygen. Two, a way to make things really hot, so a really good heat source.
And three, something that will burn, like paper, wood, things like that. And that's what we call fuel. So when you say a heat source, what might be a heat source? Oh, that's a good question. So anything that generates significant heat. So not something that's, like, lukewarm. So let's say, like, an iron. An iron generates enough heat that it can start a fire. Same thing with, like, firewood.
Hair curlers, that'll start a fire. Plug-in heaters, that'll start a fire as well. Those are all electrical things, but we also sometimes start fires with things like matches, and we have a couple questions about what matches are. My name is Kian. I'm five years old. I live in Oakland, and my question is, how do matches work?
Hi, my name is Sophie. I am six years old. I live in Milwaukee, and my question is, how does a match light on fire? A match is a tool, as we know, for starting fires. Matches are basically made of a small wooden stick or stiff paper, kind of like the ones you see in a matchbook. One end has a material that can be ignited, bursting into a small flame, by heat from rubbing the match against a surface.
And what is it on the end of a match that does that? Because if you rub just a piece of paper or a piece of wood against another surface, that's not going to light a fire. That's correct. So the material that's on the other end that will ignite basically has sulfur in it. And that, coupled with friction and then the air all around, you'll get a flame. And there are ways to actually start fires with just two sticks, but it takes a lot more effort.
So that's how a fire is started, but one of the things that you see when you see a fire is the smoke, and we have a question from Zoe about that. Zoe wants to say, why does stuff smoke when it's really, really hot? Okay, so basically, why is there smoke? Smoke actually occurs when there's incomplete combustion. Basically, there's not enough oxygen for something to burn all the way, to burn completely. Smoke is a collection of tiny unburned particles.
Each particle, though, is too small to see with your own eyes. But when they come together, that's how we see it as smoke. And although smoke contains hundreds of different chemicals, smoke that we can actually see is pretty much soot and ash. So if a fire is really, really, really hot, is there no smoke? Yeah, I've seen that. Not very often, but I've seen it.
but generally there is some smoke that's sort of developed with a fire. That is correct, yes. And smoke can be a good warning signal. Absolutely. Where there's smoke, there is usually fire. So there's the smoke that we can see. We also, of course, look at the fire itself, and we have some questions about that, and we have two listeners who want to know why fire is orange. Hi, my name is Anna, and I'm 4 years old.
And I'm from Charlotte, Vermont, and I want to know why fire is orange. Hello. My name is Avery. I live in Maple Valley, Washington. I'm five and a half years old, and I want to know why is fire orange? Hi, my name is Henry. I'm four years old. Why? I live in 6th Junction, Vermont, and my question to you is why is fire always red?
That's a good question. So flames are the part of the fire that we see. They can actually be different colors, and basically it depends on what's burning. The bright orange color that we see in most wood flames is because of a chemical called sodium that's in the wood. And then when it's heated, the light it gives off appears orange.
What about blue flames? That's typically magnesium. So it's all about the chemicals of what's burning that helps determine what the color of the fire is. That is absolutely correct. And it doesn't have to do with the heat of the flame. It has to do with what's actually burning? The substance that's burning. Okay, so...
That's how fires start. And we're talking about fires, but not all fires are destructive. Your job is to put fires out, but a lot of times we want to have fire. We want to have fire to keep us warm. We want to have fire to roast marshmallows. We want to have fire to see things by. There are a lot of reasons that fire is a great tool and has allowed us to actually do all the things that humans do. So how do you think about fire? Um...
Pretty much the same way. I mean, it's just, you know, when you think about it, when you really think about it, it's basic. It's something, again, like we said, it's a tool. So you have, you know, your parents cooking dinner for you or singing happy birthday, things like bonfires when they're supervised. You know, those are events, you know, that you have at schools that, you know, kids kind of, you know, enjoy. It's not the destructive side. It's more of, I guess you could say, the entertaining side. Okay.
How do you talk to kids about that difference? Because fires are important, but they can also be dangerous. You want people to have a healthy respect for them, but not necessarily be scared, but then also to know how to be safe. That's absolutely correct. That's why it's so important that we teach our children very young, because kids can definitely understand and
pretty much retain basic fire safety information. So, you know, something as simple as, yeah, there's a flame on the birthday candle. It's supervised. It's a small flame. It's a controlled environment. You know, same thing with cooking. You know, you have your parents that are, you know, pretty much doing the cooking and not our kids. So it's a tool that needs to be respected and needs to be supervised. Natural curiosity for kids.
Once the curiosity gets to be where the child is using it in a manner where it's destructive and unsupervised is when we definitely need to address it. Let's talk a little bit about fire prevention since that's partly what you do and that's an important part. So a lot of us have fire alarms in our house, smoke alarms, and we're supposed to have them because that's one of the ways to stay safe and so you know if there's a fire in your house. So here are two questions. My name is Hiram.
I'm five years old. I'm from Lehigh, Utah, and my question is, how can our fire alarms sense stuff? My name is Benjamin. I am four years old, and I'm from Enfield, New Hampshire, and my question is, how do fire alarms work?
Okay, so smoke alarms are small appliances that's triggered or, as we like to say also, set off when they sense smoke that enters a special area of that particular device, the appliance. So the smoke alarm is sensing, or what we sometimes call a fire alarm, it's actually sensing smoke. It's not seeing a fire. It's having smoke come into it, and then that device says, uh-oh.
It says, uh-oh, there is smoke, and it's coming into my particular compartment where once I realize it's here, it's not supposed to be here, I'm going to send out that warning signal, and it's going to beep really, really, really loud. Smoke is poisonous, and breathing it in can be very dangerous to our bodies. Smoke will rise to the ceiling, and then when it does that, it leaves that cooler, better air that's closer to the floor. This is why we teach our children to crawl to safety.
Get low, stay low, go to your exit. Once you're outside, you stay outside, you definitely don't run back into the burning building. So it's just telling people in the building, the smoke alarm is saying something's happening. I, the smoke alarm, sense the smoke. You need to get out. But that doesn't necessarily call the fire department. So we have questions about that. My name is Elijah. I'm four. And my question is,
How do firefighter alarms or police station alarms know when there's a fire or bad guys?
So you can address it just from the fire department standpoint. So that's an awesome question, too. So what we have is called a CAD system in all of our fire stations. And CAD stands for Computer Aid Dispatch. It actually looks just like a computer. And the information on there comes from the 911 call takers. So when you call 911 and you give them the information, it's
they then punch that information into their computer system. And that's why it's important for our little people to learn their address and their phone number so if they ever have to call 911, they can tell that person their address or phone number, and they can then put that information in our system.
Okay. And so when that happens, somebody at the other end of the phone, when you dial 911, known as usually a dispatcher, will say, okay, where are you and what's the problem? And then the dispatcher will know whether to call the fire department or the police department. So...
do they put something in your computer system that just tells you, or do you get a call from someone who says, firefighter Lisa, you need to go to this address? So no, that's what they do. They will put something in the computer system. Once it comes up in our, again, our computer screen, that CAD system will hit a button. It'll come up. It'll give that person's information, that information that they gave. So it's their address, maybe a phone number, what the emergency is. If it, in fact,
is a fire. It's going to tell us where the fire is if that person knows. Today we're answering your questions about fire with Philadelphia firefighter Lisa Desimore. In just a minute, we will find out why water is so good at putting out some kinds of fire. And we'll go visit some young people who spend weeks camping out and have to make a lot of campfires. This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. And today you're curious about fire.
Once the fire department arrives at a fire, they have a lot of different tools they can use to fight the fire. And one of the main ones is, as you know, water. But what's so special about water? My name is Karlyn, and I'm five years old, and I live in Brisbane, Australia. And my question is, how does water put out fires, and does snow put out fires?
Hi, my name is Allison and I'm four years old and I live in Vermont. My question is how does water make fire go away? My name is Ronan and I'm four years old and I'm from West Hartford, Connecticut. I want to know why water puts out fire. I'm
Hi, my name is Silas. I live in West Coraline, Nova Scotia. I am six years old and my question is, how does water put out a fire? Do you remember when Firefighter Lisa told us that three things are needed to make a fire? It's like a fire triangle. One, oxygen. Two, a heat source. And three, something that burns called fuel.
Water attacks two sides of that triangle. When firefighters spray water on the fire, it prevents the fire from getting oxygen from the air. And remember, the fire needs oxygen to burn. So if the water is preventing the fire from getting oxygen, it starts to help put out that fire.
But water is also cooler than fire, and it can't burn itself. So it takes the heat from the fire, and the water gets hot, but it turns into steam, not fire. So the water cools the fire down enough so that it stops burning. But you should know that not every type of fire is put out by water. Sometimes things like oil or grease start to burn, and oil floats on top of water, so water is typically not a good thing to spray on a grease fire.
Water is also a good conductor of electricity, so you should never put water on an electrical fire either. There are special chemicals you can put on those kinds of fires, and sometimes you'll see you'll have a little fire extinguisher in a home or school or office, and those can be used on different types of fires. Things like wood and paper, those respond well to water when they are on fire.
But the bottom line is that if you see a fire or smoke, or if you start a fire, you should immediately tell an adult. And that adult can help you put out the fire or call the fire department. In the United States and Canada, you can use a phone and dial 911 if you have an emergency. In the UK, you dial 999. In Australia, it's 000 or 112 from a mobile phone.
Ask an adult how to access emergency services like an ambulance, the police, or the fire department in the country where you live. Now, sometimes we think about firefighters and what we know comes from popular movies or books that we read. My son, Dalan, was three when he asked this question that we then posed to Firefighter Lisa. Why do firefighters have dogs?
We often see Dalmatians, so where did that come from? And that's a pretty cool question, too. They all are. They're wonderful. So before we had trucks and cars, basically horses were the way to go. That's how we got around, right? Dalmatians and horses are very compatible. That's just to say they get along really well. So the dogs were easily trained to run in front of the horses, the engines, to help clear a path to guide the horses and the firefighters to the fires quickly.
We no longer have the Dalmatians in our stations today, but they are actually chosen by a lot of firefighters as pets because of their, you know, heroism in the past. Do you have a Dalmatian? I don't. I would love one, but I don't have the time.
Do you slide down a pole when it's time to go fight a fire? I have. Here in the city, there are only two stations that still have the active pole. And I worked, I believe, overtime at one of them. So that's how I was able to slide down. Where I was stationed at, we were one level. We didn't have a pole. Okay.
Does anybody really use the pole to slide down? You know what they do at those firehouses? They do. They are the multi-level ones. So if they're on the second level, then to get to the fire engine quickly or the ladder truck quickly, they're going down the pole.
Do firefighters sleep at the fire station? So, yes, we do. And it depends on, you know, where you're at in the country, you know, what department you are. That dictates, you know, or tells your schedule. So if you have a schedule where you're working overnight, yeah, you sometimes will sleep at the station.
Is being a firefighter a dangerous job? Very much so. Very much so. I mean, fire in of itself is dangerous. So when you think about, you know, a home on fire, a car on fire, or a brush fire, you want to make sure that you stay safe. And that's why we have the academy and you learn all the basics there.
So at the academy, it's like going to school to be a firefighter. Absolutely. Yep. It's just like school. You're in a classroom, you're doing classroom work, and then you go outside and you kind of do the physical work. And you even have what's called PT, physical training. So sort of like gym time where you're doing jumping jacks and you're running and you're doing all that good stuff.
Although sometimes you have to do it with air tanks on and all of your equipment. Yes, and that's difficult sometimes. But, I mean, you manage and you get through it because, you know, you're determined and you're dedicated. Firefighter Lisa wanted to make sure she told you one other thing while we were talking with her about fire. You know, it's okay to be curious about fire. I think a lot of times kids think,
Maybe they're abnormal or there's something wrong with them and they're afraid or shy to reach out, but there's nothing wrong with being curious. And ask questions. I think I mentioned it earlier when I said it's when the curiosity gets to be dangerous, when that's unaddressed. That's when we have an issue and that, of course, definitely when we need to intervene.
So it's okay to watch the adults in your life making fires and think, how is that happening and what is it? Absolutely, and ask as many questions so you're definitely in the know and you know what's going on. But never touch a fire? Never. You never want to touch a fire. Obviously, fire is hot and you can get hurt. Lisa Desimore and I were talking at the Fireman's Hall Museum in Philadelphia. The museum traces the history of the fire department through a couple hundred years, and Lisa showed me some of her favorite displays.
We're in the portion or the part of the museum where there's a lot of older artifacts that are on display. What we're looking at is an actual water main from 1805. And a water main is a water pipe, right? That is correct. What makes this one different besides that it's really, really old, this one is a wooden pipe, so to speak. So it's actually made from wood. Okay.
And what else? We have a special hose company formed to carry hose to engine companies. So these were the old hose line.
It's really old, and it's leather. We don't have leather hose line anymore. Most of it is vinyl and plastic. It looks kind of like a really old tire or an inner tube that you would blow up, but it's actually made out of leather, and that's what the water went through for the fire department? That is absolutely correct, and it looks like a tire because obviously it's folded in that circle shape, and that's still actually what we do today when we're not using them. We...
roll them up and it looks like a wheel. How heavy is a fire hose when you're holding it? Pretty heavy. If it doesn't have any water, I should say, if there's no water in it, it's not so bad. And it depends on how much you're actually holding. A bag, we have what we call our second in bag. It can hold from about three to four lengths. And that's pretty heavy. I mean, it's going to be over 100 pounds.
Firefighter Lisa, will you explain how these work? These are fire hydrants. And so especially if you live in a city or an urban environment, you might see these on the sidewalk next to you. And they look like pipes sticking out of the ground. Sometimes they're pretty. They are often known for having dogs pee on them. But what's their actual purpose? So the actual purpose is basically for us to hook up our hose line to the actual fire hydrant so we can get water from the actual waterway.
water main. The very top of it has what we call in the very middle the stem and that's what we turn using our tools to actually open the plug or excuse me the fire hydrant itself.
So just like you get water in your home from your sink, this is connected to water underground. And so once you attach your pipe and turn it on, you'll be getting water flowing through so you can fight the fire. Absolutely. As soon as we turn the stem, you'll hear it. You'll hear the water flow. And the more turns you give that stem, typically about 12 turns, you'll get a really good flow of water.
Now, if you live in the country like I do, we don't have fire hydrants, but we have fire ponds, and sometimes the fire trucks go and they actually fill up at a pond, and they have to go back and forth and keep filling up when they empty the tank.
That's absolutely correct. Otherwise known as drafting. We actually learned that in the academy as well, sort of a backup for us. But that's not how you have to do it here in Philadelphia. No, typically we get a good water source and that hydrant is good to go. And if it's not, then yeah, we got to try to find somewhere to draft water. Thanks very much to firefighter Lisa Desimore and the Philadelphia Fire Department for helping us answer those questions.
We've been talking a lot about the dangers of fire and how to stay safe. But if you've ever laid down in front of a fireplace on a cold winter day to read a book, or sat around a campfire, maybe even roasting some marshmallows, you know that in a controlled situation, fire can be really enjoyable. And not just enjoyable. Fire has been essential to the development of human society. It has allowed us to settle in places that are very cold because it gives us heat,
It allows us to cook food, and that had a major change on how humans live and form communities. And we even have fire to thank for many, many, many of our more recent inventions, like cars. Some scientists say that fire and language are the two things that separate humans from all other types of animals.
But back to campfires. We caught up with the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. That's a group of teenagers and young adults who spend weeks at a time living in the woods and doing work on trails. And that means they get to light a lot of campfires. We asked them to show us how they do it.
My name's Terry Gardner. I am a crew leader with the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. My name is Peter Gruscio. I am also a crew leader at the VYCC. My name is Veronica Phillips, and I am a crew member here at the VYCC. We chose to burn in this old tire rim so the fire does not spread to places where it should not be. Any sort of like stone structure or something to keep the fire contained is where you should burn, not in just any old part of the woods.
When we start any forest fires. There's ashes and there's little sparks. And the less sort of vegetation we have around us, the better. So a relatively high canopy, like what we have. A good amount of room for smoke to ventilate. And we don't really have any vegetation on the ground, at least within arm's reach of the fireplace. So let's see. Piling up.
flammable things, starting with tinder to really start the fire. Then you put some kindling on top, some slightly larger sticks. Currently I'm using birch bark. It's very oily, so it sort of, it just goes right up. But small sticks or pine needles also work great. Anything, paper, egg cartons also. So you start with the small things, work your way up with the large ones. There we go. One fire. After that, you can start adding larger stuff, so the fire will keep burning.
This small stuff will just burn up real quick and then there goes your fire.
Fires can be a very fun experience for families and friends, and it can build strong relationships and a strong sense of community. But at the same time, there's a lot of responsibility that comes with them. And so if you do start a fire, it's kind of your responsibility to look after it and put it out as well. Water is always a good one, but another great one is just stomping it out until the embers burn out.
And by smothering it and the oxygen gets taken from the fire, it won't continue to burn any more than it already has. I might ask mom and dad to help me stomp out the fire. I find that at the end of the night, we're all here right now. Usually we're all together and we're recounting about the day.
And we're just kind of like bonding over this campfire that various people have worked really hard to make. And that's what makes it so much fun is that it's good for bonding and it's just good to like relax at the end of the night with a campfire. Being able to light fires is what sets us apart from every other species on this earth. You just blew my mind. Oh my god. Oh my god.
Thanks to Terry and Peter and Veronica and the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps for the lesson in starting a campfire. As they pointed out, you should always have an adult with you when you're around fire and never start one on your own or in secret.
We could go on for a long time talking about fire. It's very important, and as we pointed out, it can be very dangerous. But it's also something you may have been hearing about in the news. Forest fires have been burning this summer in parts of the world. Forest fires can be really dangerous for humans, and they can burn people's homes. But forest fires are also an important part of the natural cycle in many landscapes.
One of the problems, why this is an issue, is that humans have changed the natural landscape, and we sometimes come into conflict with the way nature operates. For example, if a fire is a natural way for a new growth in a grassland, but it also burns somebody's home because they have a permanent home there, then that's not good for the humans, even if it might be good for the natural landscape. So we've created these conflicts that are difficult for us to live with,
One of the other problems is that sometimes humans start these fires, and that's not really the natural way that they are supposed to start. So that's a problem, too. I know you didn't ask us questions about forest fires, but I just wanted to mention them in case it's something you've been curious about. And you might want to ask your adult to help explain if that's something you've been wondering.
But Why is produced by Melody Beaudet and me, Jane Lindholm, at Vermont Public Radio. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. We have help from Jonathan Butler and Noah Cutter, among many others here at VPR. We'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious. From PR.
