Friday, February 15, 2013

Dorner and the Burning Cabin

In case you were interested, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's SWAT team deliberately burned down the cabin Chris Dorner was holed up in.

The pyrotechnic tear gas used against Dorner is intended for use in outdoors crowd control as the explosive charge spreads the tear gas widely quickly. They are also sometimes used on hardened targets like concrete bunkers. SWAT has cold tear gas for uses on flammable structures.

They are not for use on wooden structures because pyrotechnic tear gas canisters burn at over 1000 degrees F. There is no benefit to using pyrotechnic tear gas on a small wooden structure except it greatly increases the probability of the building catching fire.

To a certain extent I understand why the SWAT team used an incendiary weapon. Dorner had already shot two deputies during the siege and the police were both scared and wanted vengeance. If they had had access to Hellfire missiles they would have used them. Hell, they would have nuked the cabin if only Kim Jung-un had returned their call.

Just don't believe the story the fire was an "accident."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

...and they would have randomly shot people until they got Donner.

Anonymous said...

"Randomly shot" is a bit extreme, but using incendiary devices in a wooden building? Yup, the fire was intentional. His choice was suicide or giving the police the satisfaction of shooting him.

(And those "two words" to prove I am not a robot are barely decipherable to this human.)