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  • - Behind me is the Saint Lawrence Seaway,

  • one of the largest public works projects in North America's history.

  • The seaway was a 1950s expansion of small canals and waterways

  • into a huge, navigable path for shipping between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes,

  • along with massive hydroelectric power plants.

  • That expansion came at a cost, though.

  • The water is high today, but when it's low

  • you can still see the foundations of Aultsville, Ontario,

  • one of the lost villages that were flooded to make way for progress.

  • The residents were told that they had to move

  • and see their old town demolished

  • and then drowned beneath new, higher water.

  • They didn't really have any choice in the matter.

  • And then some scientists came along and said:

  • if these homes are going to be demolished and then flooded anyway,

  • can we set them on fire first?

  • - The St. Lawrence Burns was a project

  • where they were trying to study how fires develop in buildings,

  • specifically how it affects the survival of the occupants,

  • as well as how fire spreads from one building to another.

  • The researchers were scientists from the Building Research Division

  • of the National Research Council of Canada.

  • They burned a total of eight buildings,

  • including six single-family dwelling homes,

  • one two-story school, and one community hall.

  • This was a rare opportunity, because up until this point

  • most of the research that was done on fires

  • were either from the aftermaths of real fires

  • or they did it on small-scale lab tests.

  • This, the St. Lawrence Burns, was really the first time

  • that scientists were able to conduct in-field, full-scale research

  • where they had control over the parameters

  • as well as being able to observe the fire from beginning to end.

  • - There's a fair argument that, if the buildings were going to be destroyed anyway,

  • why not take the opportunity to get useful data from them?

  • Whether it's by fire or by water, the result was going to be the same.

  • But it's also tough to ignore the human element.

  • Homes that had been in families for generations,

  • the local school, the community hall,

  • all given a sort of insult to injury

  • by folks coming in from outside for science.

  • Many people weren't even told about the burns.

  • Others chose not to watch.

  • The volunteer fire chief said in an interview years later

  • that watching the flames was "devastating".

  • But the results were probably worth it.

  • - They got a lot of different data, including things like

  • carbon monoxide concentration, smoke density, rise of temperature, oxygen levels.

  • They mounted a microphone in the bedroom.

  • They found out that the noise levels produced by a fire

  • was not enough to wake a sleeping occupant when the bedroom door is closed.

  • The assumption prior to the studies was that convection

  • was the biggest cause of fire spread.

  • But then it turns out it was actually radiant heat

  • that was more likely the culprit.

  • A combustible wood frame house could lead to another house 40 feet away to ignite.

  • And even in a non-combustible building, it could cause

  • another house about 32 feet away to ignite.

  • The St. Lawrence Burns helped change the national building code of Canada,

  • and it saved lives.

  • - Aultsville has almost passed out of living memory today.

  • On aerial photos you can still see ghosts of old roads,

  • structures that haven't been worn away by the water yet.

  • But you could see there's a little bit of Aultsville

  • in every modern home, in everything that's been built

  • in the developed world from the 1960s onwards,

  • because the results from the St. Lawrence Burns here

  • really did change the way that everything was built.

  • Thank you very much to Betty Chen from Articulations.

  • - Where I do videos about art and design.

  • - You'll want to go and check out her video about the ISO-standard exit sign.

  • It's not all science and infrastructure like here,

  • but it is a great little channel.

  • Little?

  • - Yeah, that's fine. It's pretty little!

- Behind me is the Saint Lawrence Seaway,

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B1 中級

為了科學而被燒燬的城市。Aultsville (The Town That Was Burned for Science: Aultsville)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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