Welcome to this edition of the IAAI’s CFITrainer.Net podcast. We’ve got something a bit different today. We don’t have a guest with me, but I guess in a way, we’ll make you the guest. Later in the podcast, we’re going to look for your help in developing new content focused on sharing recent information shared by you. Recently, our writer came across a feature-length article on Politico titled “This is What Happens When Bitcoin Miners Take Over Your Town.” We’ve got a link on it to—we’ve got a link to that story, anyway, on the podcast page so you can check it out. You may not have heard of bitcoin, or you may have heard of it, but you don’t know a whole lot about it, so just bear with us for a second and I promise we’ll get to the fire investigation part. Bitcoin is a virtual currency launched in 2009 by someone or someones using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin are used to buy and sell goods and services, primarily over the Internet. Although the use is not widespread compared to hard currency, bitcoin is popular among techies and, if we’re being very truthful, has some attraction for criminals because tracing transactions is rather difficult. New bitcoin are released into circulation regularly via a complicated process, which you can read about in the article, that’s called “mining.” In order to mine bitcoin, which essentially means earning bitcoin by contributing to the recording of bitcoin transactions, you need powerful computers. And the more servers you have, the more computing power you can throw at recording those transactions, and the more bitcoin you can earn for doing so. All that computing power requires a lot of electricity to run the servers. The cost of that electricity can be significant overhead. Unless you locate the servers somewhere with cheap electricity. And that’s where we come to the fire investigation issue.

Buried in this long article that’s mostly about what happens when your community has the cheap electricity that attracts bitcoin mining operations, is a brief mention of an incident where a bitcoin mining facility, which is a huge room with a lot of computers and a heavy-duty air conditioning system to keep them cool, overloaded a transformer and caused a brush fire. And that’s what caught our writer’s interest. In this part of the Pacific Northwest, a region of eastern Washington on the Columbia River known as the Mid-Columbia Basin, they have a unique fire cause issue that exists in only a handful of communities in the world. Because of the local industry of bitcoin mining facilities, thanks to the availability of cheap electricity from hydroelectric power dams on the Columbia River, overloaded transformers, jury-rigged server farms inside homes overloading circuits, and fan and A/C unit electrical malfunctions can all be triggered by excessive power demand from the servers and their cooling systems. The article describes local utility crews hunting for unpermitted bitcoin miners in places like residential homes — which sounds a lot like a previous podcast we did on fire departments finding unlicensed indoor marijuana grow facilities when jury-rigged power caused a fire. These utility crews look for spikes in power used outside what is typical for that type of structure and fans venting out of weird places in the structure.

This, plus the marijuana growing issues we’ve covered previously here on the podcast, got us thinking about the fact that there are maybe many of these unique local fire cause issues and we’re turning to you to learn more about them. If you have an unusual issue in fire causes or fire investigation that your community faces, we want to hear about it. Chances are, there’s another community out there, even if it’s across the globe, facing a similar issue, and we want to feature some of these situations on the podcast in the future so that we can learn from each other. So, please, take a minute to reach out to us and tell us what you’re dealing with in your community. You can use the feedback form on this page. After that, you might want to sit down with a cup of coffee and read that article about bitcoin mining — it’s a fascinating piece.

A quick update to this story. Just saw another posting based on a story from “motherboard from Vice” The city of Plattsburgh, NY has imposed an 18-month ban on bitcoin mining to prevent miners from using all of the city’s cheap electricity. The story quotes Mayor Colin Read after some local residents were complaining about their electricity bills. The mayor says : “I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints that electric bills have gone up by $100 or $200,” Read said. “You can understand why people are upset.” The city and local miners are working on a solution that would have the miners paying overages, but what about the potential fire hazards if the miners don’t follow code? I’m sure there is more to come in this case. The story does not claim that any of the current bitcoin miners are avoiding code requirements.

Finally, just a brief reminder that we’re only two months away from IAAI’s 2018 ITC in Frisco, Texas. If you haven’t already, check out the schedule and the instructors at iaaiitc.com.

That concludes this podcast. Stay safe. Be careful how you get involved in bitcoin, and we’ll see you next time on CFITrainer.Net. For the IAAI and CFITrainer.Net, I’m Rod Ammon.

This is What Happens When Bitcoin Miners Take Over Your Town.

Tell us about a fire cause or fire investigation issue facing your community.

IAAI 2018 ITC