- 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!