Episode 88 - Fire

Fire has been a game-changer in the story human evolution. It's mesmerizing and romantic,  dangerous and terrifying, and utterly compelling. This week, Christine and JJ burn through a box of matches describing the mysterious visuals of fire, from humble candles to devastating wildfires. 

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JJ Hunt: 0:03

Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt

Christine Malec: 0:26

Hi, I'm Christine Malec.

JJ Hunt: 0:28

And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description rich conversations

Christine Malec: 0:47

Today we're gonna talk about fire, which is pretty vague. So we thought we just, JJ is gonna flick on the fireplace channel, and we're gonna do a half hour of live description of the fireplace channel.

JJ Hunt: 0:57

Tee hee hee!

Christine Malec: 0:58

We've been giggling about that idea for a month, just so everyone knows, we just think that's eternally funny. That's actually not what we're gonna do. But fire is one of those things that it's it's so vague, and we found ways to sort of narrow it down, but if you if you are blind or have you know, have always been blind, it's pretty. It's a bit of a vague concept, except that it'll burn Yeah, and so it's kind of funny. If you want to agitate sighted people get really close to a fire if you're comfortable and start acting like you're gonna play with a fire or try to start a fire it's very agitating as it should be. I know don't get me wrong, but yeah, guaranteed way to get some side of people very agitated. I personally don't play with fire but I know blind people who do and I admire them for it um, we thought we would start sort of small scale and and work our way up and so we're gonna start with with candle light and candles but I wonder JJ if there's just some vague generic things to say about flame or should we talk about it each each one in context?

JJ Hunt: 2:04

Yeah, I mean, if we start with candles a lot of the elements of the look of a candle flame a lot of that applies as we start growing into bigger flames like fireplace fires or campfires a lot of the basics are are actually there from that same tiny little very uniform candle flames so if we start there we can probably just just build on that

Christine Malec: 2:28

So does it matter what kind of candle like from birthday candle up to you know candelabra candle? Do they tend to have the same effect?

JJ Hunt: 2:36

Well, this is what's interesting about candles. They are surprisingly uniform. You know, the same kind of flame comes off of a birthday candle is comes off of a pillar candle, as comes off of a tapered candle. The flame itself is is quite uniform, so it's a single flame off of the wick. It's shaped kind of like the tip of a pencil, so it's a little bit more full at the bottom, it's quite tapered at the top, and it's about the size of a pencil tip too. So that's about more or less the size of a flame on on a candle. If you see a cartoon version of it, it might be a little bit more teardrop shaped so rounded and bulbous at the bottom and coming to a tapered point. But typically they're more like the tip of a pencil. A shorter wick makes a shorter flame a longer wick makes a longer flame. But otherwise the shape is pretty uniform. It's a cone at the bottom where the wick is inside the flame. There's some color variations so the flame generally surrounds the wick at the bottom and rises up. And if you get really close if you're not dangerously close, but if you get if you if you focusing in at the bottom of the flame, where the this is right at the base of the flame where it rises off of the pool of melted wax that's at the top of the candle. You can see some blue in there there's some blue color, and then around the wick, the flame is actually translucent. The wick is clearly visible inside that flame the wick usually is blackened, but the tip will will glow a bright orange color. And sometimes actually if the candle has been burning for a while and that pool of liquid wax at the top of the candle is really nice and hot. Then the flame looks like it's hovering above the wick. It doesn't even look like it's attached to the wick. It's not just translucent, the flames not in contact with the wick or the candle it's kind of hovering above which is really interesting.

Christine Malec: 4:37

Whoa.

JJ Hunt: 4:38

Yeah, just above the wick. If you if you again looking really carefully you can maybe spot some curved bands of color very subtle, so there will probably be some oranges in there some reds in there, some golden yellow colors in there. And then if you as you move up the flame by the time you get to the yellows right in the middle of the flame, the flame is actually opaque. So the middle of a flame, that's where it burns brightest, it's really bright. So even though the flame is small, it's kind of difficult to stare into this bright, creamy yellow flame, it's so intense that it, it actually hurts the eyes. So, you know, when I was doing my research, it's the first time I've ever done my research by candlelight, it was quite lovely actually. But I could only glance at that part of the flame I could study quite carefully the you know where the wick was, but by the time you move up into the middle where it's burning at its brightest, it's just a little too intense. The sides of a candle flame have very clean edges, very smooth, very crisp. But up at the top where it's tapered and coming to a point, there's probably a little bit of feathering, so the point of the flame might be just the little bit ragged, and up near the top. At that ragged point, it's slightly less opaque, and slightly less intense. If there's if there's no breeze or draught, the flame actually might look motionless. It's entirely stable.

Christine Malec: 6:13

Oh wow!

JJ Hunt: 6:14

If you gently blow or there's a little bit of a breeze somewhere, then that the flame will dance about it'll change shapes that translucent core near the wick, maybe that's going to stretch out. In fact, the flame might bend completely off the tip of the wick. But then within seconds of the breeze stopping if you stopped blowing, the flame will snap back to its stable, almost motionless self and it'll stay there again, until it gets blown or there's a little bit of a breeze or something. It's really interesting and just a little fun fact, while I was doing my research, I came across a what is fire kids explainer video? So yes, sometimes I build up my scientific knowledge with PBS Kids Videos, they are very useful sometimes. And they had a really interesting camera angle to show that a candle flame isn't actually a solid cone shape like it looks it's it's actually hollow. I had no idea that this was the case. What they did was they filmed straight down from above and then interrupted the tip of the flame with wire mesh and this kind of interrupted and broke the tip off of the flame and you could see from directly above that the flame is actually in a circle around the wick the flame on a candle is actually hollow. I had no idea.

Christine Malec: 7:39

Gasp! I have to ask, what is it about candlelight that makes it so romantic? I've heard it said that people are at their most attractive in candle light can you have any insights into that?

JJ Hunt: 7:53

The light from a candle I mean, the light from any fire is is quite warm. And it's like... how to describe how and why it's appealing...? I mean there's a little bit of movement to it, it's slightly dynamic and with a candle flame. It's you know, it's subtle. We you know, when you start to get into the look of like the lighting that a campfire provides that's totally different but lighting from a candle. It's very subtle, it's very warm, it casts the smallest of shadows, on on the people who are gathered around. And it's it's cozy, there's a coziness to being lit by candles. And you know usually if it's if you're lighting by candles, the rest of the light is kind of dim so that there's a bit of a play off of that it's there's something about the warmth of not only the physical warmth, but the warmth of the color. That little bit orange a little bit ie a little bit gold and it's a bit of a magic light that makes everything around it look cozier.

Christine Malec: 9:03

You lead beautifully into my next question by using the word magic because it was a pop culture reference but I'm a big Harry Potter fan and they in the books they describe the great hall where they eat as at night it's lit by 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of candles and so can you still have that warm intimate effect when you magnify all of those candles or is it cumulative so that it just becomes bright like it does the quality of the flame stay the same even if you got a ton of candles lit in a space

JJ Hunt: 9:38

Yeah, definitely it is brighter so it's not necessarily as dim and cozy but it's but it's still the color is the same and the activity the movement of the flames that flickering that is that is still present. So like the light from campfires for example, Right, it's very distinctive. And if you've got a bank of candles, you're moving. You know, it's somewhere between the light from one or two candles and a campfire. But, you know, when you get a lot of camp fire light, and you know, the campfire, produces an awful lot of light. It's interesting, you know, I was once back in when I was in theater school, I took a lighting class, and the professor assigned every student in the class a different lighting situation that they had to replicate. So you you have to light what it looks like inside a city bus at three o'clock in the morning, and you have to light what it looks like a the light from a sunset on a beach. And then someone was given the assignment of lighting, what it looks like to be sitting around a roaring campfire, really challenging lighting situation, the color, the action, the warmth, was really hard to do. But if you nailed it, the scene was almost guaranteed to be effective, because so many people connect with that, that light. So there's usually an orange glow, when you're talking about a lot of flame like a campfire. Especially at night, if it's dark all around, and you've got this orange glow coming from a central spot, the campfire will light up a fairly wide area, but it's dark everywhere else, right so that you get this flickering orange light cast on all the people who are gathered around the central light source. So the the shadow patterns are very particular because they're coming from the central point. And inside that pool of light, it can be really quite bright. But outside of that light, it's pitch black. So in the same way that the front of your body which is facing the fire feels warm, and your back feels cold, in front of you, is bright, but behind you is pitch black. And so that affects mood and maybe fear and maybe comfort and togetherness for all those who are gathered around a fire, you're sharing something, you're sharing that light, you're sharing that warmth, and that togetherness is similar if you're in a hall if you're in a like a castle Hall. And there are, you know, 1000s or hundreds of candles that are in, you know, literal candelabras hanging from the ceiling, there is a sense that you are sharing that light, you are sharing that warmth with all those who are gathered around

Christine Malec: 12:32

The other day, it's been really cold here and I walked outside and it was really cold and sunny. And there was a tang of smoke in the air. I guess someone in the neighborhood had been having a fire. SNIFF And I sniffed and I was instantly winter camping.

JJ Hunt: 12:48

Yeah, yeah.

Christine Malec: 12:48

Because of the chill in the air on the sun. And that smell of smoke. And so smell is notorious for that it instantly evokes memory and does does the look of a campfire, do the same thing. You see that light and you instantly are somewhere else.

JJ Hunt: 13:04

Yeah, if you're walking through, say you're going through a campground at night, and you can see other people's campsite and they've got their fire going and they've got their fire going, you kind of want to join everyone, right?

Christine Malec: 13:18

Ya! Heh heh heh.

JJ Hunt: 13:18

You want to cozy up to it. And same with a fireplace that's inside, you know, if there's a fire going in the fireplace somewhere in the house, that's where everyone's gonna gather.

Christine Malec: 13:28

It's true.

JJ Hunt: 13:29

You do want to join because it's a very... fire in a fireplace or fire in a campfire, there's a lot of movement and activity in that fire. You know, we talked about how still a candle flame was. Well that changes when you move into a fireplace situation, the air movement is more complex. The fuel source is a little bit more regular, right like in a candle, you've got a uniform pool of melted wax and you've got a little wick. So the the flame is quite stable in uniform. But if you're burning, kindling and split logs in a fireplace, it's less uniform, it's more varied so the fire itself becomes much more dynamic the colors quite similar to the candle flame. If you're going to find blues in a fireplace again, they're going to be near the bottom close to the fuel source where the fire is at its hottest in the middle of the flames in a fire in a fireplace. They're going to be kind of more white hot and opaque. But there are some oranges and reds that are in there and then the tips of the flames in a fire in a fireplace. They're they're more translucent and they're quite ragged. There's a lot of it's like mountain ranges really feathery and ragged up the top. That's where a lot of the movement is. Once a fire has been going on in a fireplace for a while, you'll probably be able to find like some stable individual flames within it. But they really flicker and you know when I was thinking about how to describe fire and how to describe, I thought I need to come up with a way to explain Flickr because it's it's key to understanding what fire looks like. So I watched fire videos on YouTube on on slow speeds to see if I could break down what exactly Flickr was what is flicker. So when a flame flickers, it changes shape. So it reaches higher, it splits into two it grows wide or near the base, it's just constantly changing shape, and then snapping back to something of a neutral shape. And it does this over and over again. So a flame might rise high and then snap to a neutral shape and then split into and then snap back and then grow wide or near the base and snap back over and over and over again, totally feels random. And then flames that are close together. They might temporarily become one as they flicker they meld into a single larger flame and the kind of you know that the heat swirls them around a little bit the air movement makes them change shape and then they separate again. So this flickering is about growing and changing shape, but it's also about swaying and shifting. So a flame might be rooted like on one end of a log or a sticking in a fireplace. But that flame is going to sway and shift from side to side because there's there's so much more movement of air right there's always a breeze inside that fire. So the flames are constantly moving around. I think this is why people say that flames dance.

Christine Malec: 16:29

I was just thinking that! I was just about to make that connection.

JJ Hunt: 16:32

It really does look very dancey! There's a lot of wild and frenetic and very free and fluid movement inside a burning fire. And then it's about like the speed, right? Like a flickering is very fast. So if you'd like hold your hand up in front of you, and you you palm is up and you wiggle, wiggle your fingers kind of as fast as you can. Flames flicker much faster than that.

Christine Malec: 16:57

Yeah, yeah.

JJ Hunt: 16:58

There's a lot of it's very, very, very quick. And you know, flames, the bend all around like not only do they rise from logs, but they bend around them too. So if you throw in a you know, a new log or a stick on top of a roaring fire in a fireplace, the flames might split and wrapped around so like those wiggling fingers will now come up on both sides of the it's really interesting move. There's so much movement, the flames in a fire in a fireplace are a bit like, like people in a crowd.

Christine Malec: 17:32

Hmm!

JJ Hunt: 17:32

You know, like if you step back, the crowd swells and shifts and moves as one like we talked about in, what was the Black Friday episode?

Christine Malec: 17:40

Um hm.

JJ Hunt: 17:40

You can see the whole crowd moving and you can see the whole fire moving. But if you if you look inside that fire, you can you can point out you can pick out individual people who are moving independently, this person's doing this thing this person's doing that the flames are much the same. Each individual flame is kind of moving on its own reacting to the wind and the heat and everything that's on that part of the log. But it's all part of the greater fire. So there's a lot of action and activity, which is why we're I think one of the reasons where we're drawn to it visually, there's just so much going on in a fireplace

Christine Malec: 18:21

As a blind person gas fireplaces are just mysterious and kind of lame to me. But can we talk about that? Are they any fun to watch or not? They different from combustion of solid stuff?

JJ Hunt: 18:33

Yeah, I mean, they're more uniform. And that's one of the reasons they look quote unquote, fake. It's still fire burning. But the flames are coming from little jets of gas. So there's going to be more blue close to the bottom, because that's how gas burns when you're still going to get the different colors as they go up. And the flames are still going to flicker because probably within that gas fireplaces, a little bit of air movement, and so there's still going to be some of that flicker. But it's more uniform in the natural fireplace, there's so much more that happens that the logs are placed in slightly different patterns. So there's more activity, there's more overlap, there's more, you know, the heat buildup in one spot over another, whereas the the uniformity of a gas fire takes a little bit of the wild out of it. It takes a little bit of the mystery out of it because as long as you stare at it, it's probably going to look more or less the same. That's never gonna shift logs never gonna burn down. You're never gonna throw a new log on to it where the flames are the flames will always be in a campfire instead of a few split logs like you'd use in a fireplace. If you're in a campfire situation. You're using more logs, more branches, more irregular pieces of wood. And you're piling on that wood on from all sides. So instead of just a few rows of flames rising off of slightly overlapping logs, or in the case of a gas fireplace, specific jets of gas that are lit on fire, now you have in a campfire, a tangle of wood, there're overlapping the pieces of wood are overlapping all over the place. So this creates real hotspots, lots of opportunities for the flames to to interact and to meld and to grow. So and there's also more wind, you've got more wind coming from all directions. So this it feeds the hot coals, it encourages the fire to spread. You probably also have more bush and twigs and pine needles in in a campfire. So you're going to get sparks that are crackling to life, these little glowing orange dots that rise up on updrafts and then float away into the dark sky. And then there are coals in a campfire that you really get to, I mean, there are coals in in in a fireplace fire too. But in a campfire, you tend to savor it, you stick around and you watch the coals burned down. So as Wood Burns, the surface appears to kind of dry up and deep cracks form in these dry logs. So similar to like a dry cracked desert or, or a dry mud flat. And of course, different wood burns in different ways. So a really thick pine log is going to look different than a slim oak branch, right, depending on what the the patterns are within the wood, how dry it is how wet it is all of those things. So each piece of wood is gonna burn differently. But generally, when the fire is it's a you've got, you know, a burned log half burned log, the morning after a fire, it's going to be ash gray in color, the cracks are deep and black. But if you take that same hacker and log in you and you have a burning fire around it, you put that in a burning fire, it's gonna glow, it's gonna be bright, bright, bright, orange, maybe even white hot. And if the burning logs are leaning against each other, like I've talked about, they might form a small oven, and in that oven, it's gonna get intensely hot. And when it gets really really hot, that's when the the visuals get kind of wonky. I don't quite know how to describe it, but it's a it's a little bit like when there's so much heat, it's a bit a little bit like the image is being projected onto a rippling surface. It's so intensely hot that it appears to warp the air all around it. So it's a little bit trippy. It's a little bit like dizzy-making and you know, it's kind of hypnotic. And so these logs, they continue to burn down the cracked surfaces, they start to look a little bit like scales on a snake, and eventually a burned log. When all the fuel is used up. It'll crumble into a pile of embers. And these embers are like shards of coals. This is when if you've ever been around a fire and there's a very high pitched crackling sound, it's almost like a tinkling sound. This is from embers that are burning really hot. They're light and delicate. If you scoop them up or move them with a stick, they're really light really delicate. Often there's no flame even rising off of them the but the heat is still incredibly intense. And they glow bright, bright, bright orange color. And it's got a bit of a wavering quality to the color. It's not solid orange, it's there's a little bit of a wavering to this brilliant orange color coming off a bed of hot hot hot coals.

Christine Malec: 23:40

Now fire can take a alarming and destructive turn too, and in this past year, unfortunately, we've heard stories about out of control fires, forest fires and encroaching on living spaces. And can we talk about a bit of the visuals of that I know we've had a few listener inquiries about that. And unfortunately, some people who who were in zones like that and affected by some of that really frightening stuff. So can we talk about some of the visuals of when things get scary and destructive?

JJ Hunt: 24:15

Yeah, absolutely. I think it was Kathy in Colorado who sent us an email a few weeks back asking us to describe the Marshal wildfire. And we weren't able to do an entire episode on that particular wildfire. Hopefully some description of wildfires in general will be of benefit to the people in the community who have who have been affected by these. I mean, yeah, we've been talking about the charming and romantic kinds of fire contained fire, but when it burns out of control, it's genuinely terrifying. And of course visually, we associate fire with with demons and hell, it's the stuff of nightmares. So, just as a starting point, you know, take that mental image of the campfire we've been describing and enlarge it to an epic scale. Write the colors are often the same. Those oranges, those yellows, those reds, not as much the blues I don't think I've ever seen blues in a wildfire situation. But a lot of those colors oranges, reds and yellows, but more intense, right? The flickering flames they become laughing flames. So a candle flame might be just a couple of inches tall. Inside a fireplace you might get flames that are maybe up to a foot tall, a campfire, maybe two feet, maybe up to six feet tall if it's a big bonfire, but wildfire flames we're talking 100 feet tall, taller than the trees. They are massive and as fire grows in size, it grows in power and in speed and in ferocity and an intensity exponentially. Exponentially is what's important here. Everything about fire grows to terrifying proportions as it gets larger and larger. So the flame movement in a wildfire situation is extreme wind can whip those flames from side to side like remember I said like the candle flame might bend so that the wick is is uncovered almost as as the flame blows over when you do that with 100 foot tall flame and that whips from side to side now that flame is stretching and it's it's catching other things are on fire right. The changing shape of flames in a in a wildfire situation means that it can swell to twice its size in an instant. Other trees grass or structures can easily catch fire. And that's how fires spread and move so quickly because the flames within the fire are bending and shifting and changing all of the time. And this phenomenon of like separate flames melding together, it's really intensified in and out of control fire within wildfires, a particular spot might burn with such intensity that it actually resembles a gas fed jet engine like the fire will swirl like a tornado in the heat movement, the air movement can be so tumultuous, so churning that the fire can can swirl and just incorporate everything around it, it can just you know, swallow up all kinds of cars and houses and trees and, you know farm fields. Often, footage of wildfires comes from one of two places either on the ground or from the air. So aerial shots of wildfires are often filmed by you know news helicopters and planes. And these shots these angles provide a sense of just how large a fire might be. So an entire treed mountainside might be blanketed in Smoke just covered in thick, thick smoke and sometimes that smoke is gray. Sometimes it's black, depending on what's being burned. Sometimes it's gray near the bottom and then black near the top it's depends on on again what's being burned underneath. Sometimes if you're looking from an aerial view, you'll see a jagged line of orange at the at the edges of the fire that you know the fire itself. But sometimes you can only see the thick smoke the smoke is so thick, you can't see the flames underneath. And then sometimes in this aerial footage, a tiny plane might fly over the fire and release a load of chemical fire or fire suppressant. And this is interesting because it gives you a sense of scale, right? Yes, yes, you're looking at a whole mountain side. But then a plane flies through and you realize just how massive that fire is. Because the plane is tiny tiny tiny. Grain of rice kind of tiny.

Christine Malec: 29:05

Um hm.

JJ Hunt: 29:05

I've seen images of like a little tiny plane flying over a fire and then it shoots out of its back of red powder, a chemical powder that is just shot out of the back of the passing plane and then this powder falls down onto the trees before as a suppressant really the scale there becomes clear and then you get the footage from the ground right footage from the ground for obvious reasons it tends to be more intense right? You see these huge walls of fire approaching or surrounding and they the sound from within that fire is often it's like being in a in a storm. You can hear the wind from within there because so much wind so much air movement being sucked up in the in these huge flames and the word rage right? When people talk about"the fire rages", it's a very accurate description of this kind of fire, the fire is raging all around lots of smoke in footage from the ground. So not so much like a blanket of smoke or a cloud of smoke, but more like omnipresent smoke the smoke is everywhere you get the sense that you are inside the smoke the whole every part of the image is is gray or black or like a sometimes there's a like a sickly mustard brown quality to the air that's all around it's you can't see very far that you know, you'll see the the firefighter who's in the in the foreground, but nothing in the background. And sometimes the smoke overhead is, is thick, and black. And so everything looks dark, even in the daylight. But sometimes, the clouds of smoke block the sunlight from above, but the fire underneath burns so bright that everything in that scene is tinted orange or red because the only source of light is fire. It's in intense intense colors within in these fire situations in in wildfires, even with the thick, nasty smoke all around.

Christine Malec: 31:16

That's truly terrifying. And alongside that, I remember last summer, we had some bad forest fires in northern Ontario, and people were posting photos on Facebook of the sunsets even just in the city, which in Toronto was very far south in terms of like Ontario or in the south, you know, extreme of the province. But from far away, the smoke was drifting down and creating an effect that people were able to find some beauty in the sunsets. Can you explain a bit of that?

JJ Hunt: 31:52

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, they often say that a polluted sky makes for the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets, it really brings out the deep dramatic colors. This is true, it has to do with the particles in the air blocking the blues and leaving only the reds and oranges. So if there's a forest fire or even a volcano nearby, there's an awful lot of gunk in the air and in particular natural aerosols. And what all these aerosols do is it can turn a sunset, blood red and I'm I really do mean blood red. I've seen footage and photos of dark tree lines that are silhouetted against Blood Red Skies, or sunsets in purples and moebs from dissipating wildfire, smoke or even skies that are like pumpkin, orange streaked with red clouds really dramatic again tending to be towards the reds and the oranges. I found a photographer on Flickr woman named Ingrid Taylar, and she posted an image of a spindly pine tree on a rocky outcropping that was overlooking a calm lake. And the horizon line is really hazy. It's, it's difficult to tell where the water ends in the sky begins. It's all just the background of this of this photograph is just blended layers of orange and red and hanging in the sky is this round pinkish colored sun. And then above that sun, the sky becomes cloudy and black. And the photographer has given this this lovely, you know, beautiful image the rather wistful title of "The Unfortunate Beauty of a Wildfire Sunset". And that's very much what it is. It's an unfortunate beauty in these terrible situations.

Christine Malec: 33:51

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