A Sad Time For All Of Us

[KNSSoftware]

Can they say for sure it was started by the wildfires, or could it just be coincidence, and a building that still would have burned down for some other reason, especially being a paper archive, and needing less ignition than most?  With so many fires, will every incident still be investigated to identify the true root cause?  If not, we may never know.

[Mr. Scram]

My two cents:
One would have thought that a high-tech company like Keysight, would have had scanned and converted to electronic format all those archives.

And once in electronic format, would have saved them locally and in cloud storage.....

Cloud storage is just an abstraction of local storage.

[Mr. Scram]

Can they say for sure it was started by the wildfires, or could it just be coincidence, and a building that still would have burned down for some other reason, especially being a paper archive, and needing less ignition than most?  With so many fires, will every incident still be investigated to identify the true root cause?  If not, we may never know.

It's pretty obvious why it burned down. There was a huge forest fire. There really is no reason to think of anything else at this point of time.

There's no need for baseless speculation. The events are dramatic enough as they are.

[schmitt trigger]

My two cents:
One would have thought that a high-tech company like Keysight, would have had scanned and converted to electronic format all those archives.

And once in electronic format, would have saved them locally and in cloud storage.....

Cloud storage is just an abstraction of local storage.

Regardless of semantics, a duplicate copy saved in a backup server in a location different from the main server.

[KNSSoftware]

Can they say for sure it was started by the wildfires, or could it just be coincidence, and a building that still would have burned down for some other reason, especially being a paper archive, and needing less ignition than most?  With so many fires, will every incident still be investigated to identify the true root cause?  If not, we may never know.

It's pretty obvious why it burned down. There was a huge forest fire. There really is no reason to think of anything else at this point of time.

There's no need for baseless speculation. The events are dramatic enough as they are.

Excuse me, how is asking whether there is further confirmation or facts, baseless speculation??  I have not made a guess that something else did happen.  I imagine California as highly dense as it is, gets more than it's fair share of fires, and many overlapping with this tragic incident.  Asking whether, due to the nature of this type of commercial building, an investigation is likely, looking into whether it was another victim, or isolated incident (as many still will be) is not unreasonable.

[Mr. Scram]

Excuse me, how is asking whether there is further confirmation or facts, baseless speculation??  I have not made a guess that something else did happen.  I imagine California as highly dense as it is, gets more than it's fair share of fires, and many overlapping with this tragic incident.  Asking whether, due to the nature of this type of commercial building, an investigation is likely, looking into whether it was another victim, or isolated incident (as many still will be) is not unreasonable.

Both the news item and the Keysight statement literally say the Tubbs Fire also consumed the buildings. Saying "we may never know" the cause is speculation and introducing uncertainty where there is none. No one questions the cause of the incident, as its reported various times by a number of sources. A  massive wildfire burned down the buildings.

[Chris56000]

Hi!

Are the Hewlett-Packard/Keysight Test Equipment User & Service Manuals, HP Bench Briefs, Service Journals, etc., etc., affected by this fire or have all these documents been archived digitally and still available from servers not affected by the fire?

One point I might make is that where large amounts of paper documents are archived it's so easy for a fire to rapidly rage out of control and completely destroy the building - although this was believed to be an electrical fault/spark that ignited flammable rubbish, the devastating fire in Norwich Central Library that occurred in August 1994 illustrates how easily such buildings can be rapidly destroyed from even the smallest cause, and Norwich Central Library was barely ten yards across the road from the Fire Station and they still couldn't save it!

Chris WIlliams

[KNSSoftware]

Excuse me, how is asking whether there is further confirmation or facts, baseless speculation??  I have not made a guess that something else did happen.  I imagine California as highly dense as it is, gets more than it's fair share of fires, and many overlapping with this tragic incident.  Asking whether, due to the nature of this type of commercial building, an investigation is likely, looking into whether it was another victim, or isolated incident (as many still will be) is not unreasonable.

Both the news item and the Keysight statement literally say the Tubbs Fire also consumed the buildings. Saying "we may never know" the cause is speculation and introducing uncertainty where there is none. No one questions the cause of the incident, as its reported various times by a number of sources. A  massive wildfire burned down the buildings.

Speculation: the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence. 

I have done neither.  "we may never know' is not a theory.  Just the commentary of my understanding, albeit flimsy and and unreliable one, on why fire investigations, especially on commercial one with so much combustible material, probably still need to (and do?) occur even during extreme circumstances; so assumptions are not made.

[Mechatrommer]

Its not speculation, its a provocation for query of the root cause, because the people of wisdom will not take the claim easy when the reality shows otherwise...it can sometime be good so further investigation to the truth will be conducted..without it, the sith lord (if there is one) will get lose in happiness.. but sometime its bad for disturbing public order... pick your side.. ymmv..

Btw... imho cloud storage is remote storage, not local... i can delete the file locally but somehow it still exist in the cloud so it gives illusion it still exist locally to mortal, until the server storing the file remotely on the other side of the globe burnt down...

[Mr. Scram]

Its not speculation, its a provocation for query of the root cause, because the people of wisdom will not take the claim easy when the reality shows otherwise...it can sometime be good so further investigation to the truth will be conducted..without it, the sith lord (if there is one) will get lose in happiness.. but sometime its bad for disturbing public order... pick your side.. ymmv..

Btw... imho cloud storage is remote storage, not local... i can delete the file locally but somehow it still exist in the cloud so it gives illusion it still exist locally to mortal, until the server storing the file remotely on the other side of the globe burnt down...

The cloud can be local if you self host your cloud solution. That's the problem with these buzz words. They're vaguely defined and cause all sort of assumptions and confusion.

Cloud storage is nothing more than a subset of network storage, and actually not really a unique thing at all. It's just a fancy name attributed to something that has been around for years. I guess it helps sales to push the product.

[rfeecs]

Another article with an update:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/tech-history/silicon-revolution/loss-of-hewlettpackard-archive-a-wakeup-call-for-computer-historians

100 boxes of documents sounds like it would fit in a small closet in that big building.  Also sounds like the bulk of historic documents have ended up in various other locations.

“I’m baffled why Keysight would wind up with the collection,” House says. “It was one of the least significant spinouts, and clearly had no idea of the value of the papers. Why weren’t they given to the Computer History Museum?” he wonders. “Or Stanford (to whom Hewlett donated his personal papers)? Why weren’t they digitized?”

"one of the least significant spinouts" 

[SeanB]

Flat roof, silver painted, so very likely a bitumenous waterproofing with a topcoat of bitumenous aluminium silver paint as solar protection. This is flammable, and is typically used on a concrete roof as waterproofing, as it is a very long lasting and easy to maintain layer, and is both cheap and fast to install using only simple tools and gas burners to soften the sheets and weld them together and to the concrete with a thin hot bitumen layer. It does burn if there is something that acts like a wick, and there is enough heat to melt the bitumen and cause it to wick up and vapourise, otherwise it is not too flammable.

Tthey know they are in a high fire danger area, and that the flat roof would definitely have glowing embers fall on it, and that they did not have a roof deluge system and tanks to keep the roof wet during this fire is just poor choice. Reminds me on watching CNN years ago, when there was yet another wildfire, and the aftermath showing the massive burnt residential districts, with only chimney stacks and roads showing above the ashes. In the middle of this was however a single house standing undamaged, built by an immigrant Korean engineer. CNN talking head interviewing him, and asked him why his house was the only one still there. His reply " I Thought everybody know wood burn", with his house, built from brick and plaster, with a moderately steep ceramic tile roof, with protected eaves and no wood exterior parts, that he built himself, as example.

[rsjsouza]

(...)In the middle of this was however a single house standing undamaged, built by an immigrant Korean engineer. CNN talking head interviewing him, and asked him why his house was the only one still there. His reply " I Thought everybody know wood burn", with his house, built from brick and plaster, with a moderately steep ceramic tile roof, with protected eaves and no wood exterior parts, that he built himself, as example.

The building materials used in houses in several places in the US are absolutely stupid: cardboard, styrofoam and popsicle sticks. If I had enough resources I would build one just as the engineer above (and I don't live in places plagued with wildfires, but tornadoes instead).

[CoalCreekPlastics]

At best this is careless.  A terrible loss.  Where I live the Boulder Office of Emergency Management advises people in the foothills and mountains that they are in a high-fire-danger area.  They provide them the steps to take to mitigate the risk.  People don't listen.

[Towger]

Flat roof, silver painted, so very likely a bitumenous waterproofing with a topcoat of bitumenous aluminium silver paint as solar protection.

From what I have seen the construction of American buildings re fire proofing is not a patch on other countries.   Built from wood with flammable roofs. Garages with no fireproofing between them and the rest of the roof/house.  I could go on. 

[Mr. Scram]

Flat roof, silver painted, so very likely a bitumenous waterproofing with a topcoat of bitumenous aluminium silver paint as solar protection. This is flammable, and is typically used on a concrete roof as waterproofing, as it is a very long lasting and easy to maintain layer, and is both cheap and fast to install using only simple tools and gas burners to soften the sheets and weld them together and to the concrete with a thin hot bitumen layer. It does burn if there is something that acts like a wick, and there is enough heat to melt the bitumen and cause it to wick up and vapourise, otherwise it is not too flammable.

Tthey know they are in a high fire danger area, and that the flat roof would definitely have glowing embers fall on it, and that they did not have a roof deluge system and tanks to keep the roof wet during this fire is just poor choice. Reminds me on watching CNN years ago, when there was yet another wildfire, and the aftermath showing the massive burnt residential districts, with only chimney stacks and roads showing above the ashes. In the middle of this was however a single house standing undamaged, built by an immigrant Korean engineer. CNN talking head interviewing him, and asked him why his house was the only one still there. His reply " I Thought everybody know wood burn", with his house, built from brick and plaster, with a moderately steep ceramic tile roof, with protected eaves and no wood exterior parts, that he built himself, as example.

Even though not having your house burned down is better than the alternative, it's still a huge loss. Most burned down areas need decades to rebuild, if they ever do, and being the only one left in a burnt wasteland is no fun. You'll likely be stuck there, because no one will want to buy it from you.

[cdev]

Not having your house burn down is ALWAYS preferable to having it burn down.

One thing we should be aware of, California has been so dry for extended periods in the past that huge lakes in the Sierras had forests growing on what is now their lake beds - land which is now in many cases hundreds of feet underwater!

Those trees are in many cases still there and still look like trees (in other words, the shift from the dry weather pattern to the wet one occurred in an extremely short space of time, geologically speaking)

These submerged trees, some of which are still quite tall, now look like Christmas trees because they accumulate garlands of fishing line and lures -  people have dived down there and photographed them.

Even though not having your house burned down is better than the alternative, it's still a huge loss. Most burned down areas need decades to rebuild, if they ever do, and being the only one left in a burnt wasteland is no fun. You'll likely be stuck there, because no one will want to buy it from you.