Link
A small plane is reported to have crashed into a building in Austin at about 10 AM CST.
Not good publicity for us again.
I certainly hope that there weren't many, if any, ground injuries
Watching online stream. It looks like the fire is subdued, but earlier video shows a very intense fire. Reports saying 2 people unaccounted for.
Edit:
This one's getting stranger. Reports say that the person they believe piloted the plane left a suicide note on a web site he ran. This morning he set his house on fire, where his family escaped unharmed. An IRS criminal investigation unit was in that building. However, as a friend of mine mentioned, these days it's pretty difficult to find a building that doesn't have government employees in it.
More
Editing:
I saw
more video when the fire was at its peak. That was quite a large fire. I would
have thought that even with the aviation gas and flammable office furnishings
and paper, the building's sprinkler system would have contained it better.
100LL has
112,000 BTU/gal. A cubic foot of water will absorb 60,547 BTUs when it changes
state from liquid to gas (The internet knows everything.) So with perfect
dispersal to put out the fire, for 40 gals. it would take about 80 cu. ft. of water, or
about about 600 gallons, depending on whether you have gallon or cubic foot
containers. Since a sprinkler head puts out about 25 GPM each, it would take 24
sprinkler head minutes to put out the fuel fire if they were dispersing the
water exactly where needed. I never studied fire theory, so maybe the number is
high since you only need to reduce the heat below the flash temperature point.
This number would bring the fuel back to room temperature. Of course the
sprinkler isn't smart enough to know exactly where to point the water.