Strange Fire in uninhabited city

[HayleyRenaNemeth 465]

So about a week or so ago, I was playing SimCity 4 building a new city block that had absolutely nothing in it. no zones , no roads , no streets , no avenues. Just a 6C and a 6S running cross it. between the 6S  I had a central reservation made of grass tiles and trees. Well I was working on my RHW network. 

And I get the there is a fire dialog pop up and one of the grass tiles closest to the edge of the map has caught a blaze. I don't have any footage of this happening but I was streaming at the time on my Twitch channel, https://www.twitch.tv/hayleyaetherasky , my friend @MeMyself&I was the only witness to this. 

Does anyone know what would cause something like this to happen with no structures what so ever in the city , just a little bit of RHW?? 

[matias93 7,535]

Wow, really crazy! The thread title reminded me of Centralia. Frankly, it would have been more coherent for something built to catch fire, not a random tile; I doubt the simulation took information from the neighbour tile to create a fire, but only that went a little crazy. Just to know, has the city tile had something built before (and then demolished), aside the mentioned network infrastructure? Maybe the fire probability data got stuck from before...

[HayleyRenaNemeth 465]

Just now, matias93 said:

Wow, really crazy! The thread title reminded me of Centralia. Frankly, it would have been more coherent for something built to catch fire, not a random tile; I doubt the simulation took information from the neighbour tile to create a fire, but only that went a little crazy. Just to know, has the city tile had something built before (and then demolished), aside the mentioned network infrastructure? Maybe the fire probability data got stuck from before...

no it was completely virgin land. I think I had put in the neighbour connectors as well. it was connected to another completely empty tile. one that didn't have any transportation networks at all.  the tiles with the broadleaf trees do have flammable data to them , but trees are not supposed to just all of a sudden burst into blaze. 

[matias93 7,535]

While I find spontaneous wildfires very realistic, I wasn't informed that that were something the game simulation included. The closest scenario I've experimented is with agricultural fires on towns without fire departments, but that seems to be a different phenomenon.

[MeMyself&I 379]

It was rather strange.  I don't think she even had any zones laid out either.  Just experimenting with the RHW when a tree went up in smoke!  Never seen that before, not in a tile completely devoid of development other than highway, at least.  It was so random and totally unexpected that it made me laugh out loud.  I didn't think the game prompted for a firehouse until there was some kind of zoned development but, apparently it does.

[CorinaMarie 29,902]

Looking thru the Flora exemplar for each of the trees in Simcity_1.dat shows Flammability set to 0x0A (10 in decimal) to 0x0C (12 in decimal).  While this is a small chance, it is non-zero.

[rsc204 21,867]

I've had this happen by the side of a rail network. Almost certainly it will be the flora in use that set fire, rather than the grass lots. But it depends which lots you are using too. These fires can be problematic, since often there is no road access, so the fire dept. can't even come put them out. Most objects will be flammable unless modded otherwise, so you might be surprised at what can and can't catch fire as a result.

[HayleyRenaNemeth 465]

1 hour ago, MeMyself&I said:

It was rather strange.  I don't think she even had any zones laid out either.  Just experimenting with the RHW when a tree went up in smoke!  Never seen that before, not in a tile completely devoid of development other than highway, at least.  It was so random and totally unexpected that it made me laugh out loud.  I didn't think the game prompted for a firehouse until there was some kind of zoned development but, apparently it does.

well probably because this was not something intentionally they probably didn't ever think to code to check if there were actually zones present and some development in those zones. So who knows why it occurred. 

The more likely reason is that it was a squirrel playing with matches. Squirrels have been wrecking havoc lately.

 

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I do my construction with the game paused, so I don't see such things (and my city does not pay maintenance on roads that have nobody to use them yet).

[MeMyself&I 379]

11 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Looking thru the Flora exemplar for each of the trees in Simcity_1.dat shows Flammability set to 0x0A (10 in decimal) to 0x0C (12 in decimal).  While this is a small chance, it is non-zero.

Ah, see?  Everyday is a school day .  Thanks, Cori!