Cars burning after a crash used to be pretty rare, but from local reports lately it's more common. That said, your priority should be exiting the vehicle, not trying to fight the fire (which won't start in the passenger compartment) with a tiny extinguisher. Also, you'd be breathing smoke and dry chem if you empty the extinguisher inside a closed car.Originally Posted by MistWolf
"Gunfighting is a thinking man's game. So we might want to bring thinking back into it."-MDFA
Beware of my temper, and the dog that I've found...
This is a great reminder thread. And I am going to tell a really embarrassing story, just in an effort to get people to make sure they have fire extinguishers ready to go. Sorry for the spelling and grammar in advance, I am traveling and using a fussy Blackberry Playbook to post this.
In my 20's my wife and I had a dryer fire erupt in our apartment. We had both fallen asleep on our couch and just by luck I had woken up out of my doze. I immediately smelled smoke and thought that it may be coming from a pot of corn that we had just started to boil on the stove. There was nothing wrong with the stove, and I eventually located the source in the laundry room. When I opened the dryer door it was like opening the door to a furnace.
We did not have a fire extinguisher.
This is where it gets stupid and embarrassing; I woke my wife up and to this day, trough the next few minutes I have no idea what she was doing. She can't remember either, but the only thing I remember about her being there was when I got burned and grabbing her arm to get out of the apartment.
So, we have this raging fire in our laundry room, the flames are licking out of the door and touching the ceiling. I race into the kitchen to find baking soda, and remember we don't have any. In my panic my thoughts immediately turn to water. Stupid, I know, especially with a burning electrical appliance. I briefly think about filling our garbage can with water and then spot the boiling pot of corn on the stove. In may panic, I am so ashamed to admit, I remember thinking, "that pot if the same size as our dryer door opening!". I grabbed the pot of boiling water off the stove and raced to the laundry room. I launched the water/corn mixture at the fire and immediately felt searing pain on my chest, stomach and left arm. I had given myself second degree burns from he boiling water. Here's the weird thing; my shirt was not soaked in water. The room had filled with steam, that quickly dissipated, and the fire came back as strong as ever. I don't understand how I burned myself with water but had not gotten my shirt wet, but I guess I had.
My wife heard me scream from the burn and I grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the apartment and into the hall. I pulled the fire alarm and we made our way to the door, when I spotted the fire extinguisher mounted in the hall. I had passed it hundreds of times but had totally forgotten it was there. I grabbed the little hammer thing to smash the glass, but the chain it was attached to was two short to allow me to get any force on the glass. I ended up having to put my fist through it to get it to break and cut my hand pretty good in the process.
I grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran back to my apartment. I blasted the fire with the extinguisher and the amount of smoke generated was incredible. It filled the apartment to the point that we could not see. I grabbed my wife's arm again and we decided to get out for good. I had no clue if I had an extinguished all the fire or not.
At this point other tenants were coming out of their units into the hall. We told them there was a fire and they had to leave. We saw a few who actually went back into their apartments after that statement. A few people swore at me, just for ruining their night I guess.
When we got outside the pain of the burns finally hit me. I lifted my shirt and my chest, stomach and left arm had huge blisters forming. Fire and ambulance came. I was taken to to the hospital by ambulance and my wife stayed to gather some things and talk to the fire department.
The extinguisher had put out most of the fire. The fire fighters pulled out the clothes and threw them into our bathtub and doused them with water. They were very confused why there was cobs of corn mixed with the clothes... Jesus...
Anyway, you get the point. Had we thought ahead and bought a simple small fire extinguisher, I would have dealt with the problem easily and saved myself a significant amount of pain and wound care. We now have multiple sets of extinguishers throughout our house.
I am not happy that I panicked like I did. But you never know what you will do when you are put in certain situations. Plan for the worst and save yourself the issue of having to find out. Get a fire extinguisher, and don't be like me.
Last edited by Clobbersaurus; 04-09-2017 at 09:12 AM. Reason: Clarification
"Next time somebody says USPSA or IPSC is all hosing, junk punch them." - Les Pepperoni
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1) Extinguisher's under the sink behind me.
2) It's several years old, though. Should probably replace it. And get a decent one for the garage while I'm at it.
3) I used to get annual certifications extinguishing fires when I worked at the SKB flight department. I wonder where I'd look into that every few years as just Jane Q. Public?
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Citizen Corps - Search CERT Programs By Zip Code
As an aside, I had to do a stupid number of google searches to find the correct wording that would return the official website for Indianapolis...
Last edited by Drang; 04-09-2017 at 03:00 PM.
Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
Thanks, Drang!
+1 on what the other FFs have said on this thread.
What I have near (not in) my own kitchen is a 2A:20BC rated ABC extinguisher. It only weighs 7 lbs, and everyone in the house can wield it. Why near? The extinguisher is between the kitchen and the exit, so if you're going for the extinguisher, you're not putting the fire between you and the door. If you mount one in the kitchen you will want to put it away from the stove, and near the way out. In any case, if you're not making headway in a few seconds, get out and call us.
Even if you think you have it out, call us anyway. We can check to make sure the fire hasn't gotten into your cabinets, or walls, and your insurance company is going to want the fire report anyway.
Clobbersaurus, thanks for sharing. I think dryers are probably our #2 fire location, after kitchens. If you think your dryer's on fire, kill the power if you can do so safely, evacuate the house and call us from the front yard. Dryers do a pretty good job of containing things if you just leave the door shut. It'll still make a ton of smoke, and a surprising amount of CO. I had one a couple years ago, homeowner started the dryer and left, came 4+ hours later to some smoke in the house. The dryer itself was out, and pretty much cold. The ladder captain decided to make a quick run through the house with a CO meter before we left, just in case. CO was well over 100PPM upstairs, and we didn't even go down into the basement. Took us another half hour to get the CO in the house down to a safe level.
Tam, most of the smaller extinguishers are not maintainable. Any fire protection company can tell you if yours are. I googled fire extinguisher service Indianapolis and there are a bunch. If its an ABC/BC dry chem, and it doesn't have a pressure gauge, it's probably disposable. Your fire department probably doesn't maintain extinguishers (we send ours out) and we're not even allowed to recommend a place.
Moved my commentary on the video to the bottom cause this is already stupid long ..
I did some basic googling, and Consumer Reports rated the spray can one 'do not buy' in 2010. It doesn't seem to have gotten any better. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/n...hers/index.htm According to wiki, the main ingredient is primarily used as a food additive (which would be a bonus if the product worked ). It doesn't have an ABC rating, which makes me assume that it couldn't pass a ratings test. Calling it the High Point of fire extinguishers might be an insult to High Point-maybe it's the Bryco 22 of fire extinguishers. Amazon lists it for 12.97. For 19.98 they'll sell you the 1A:10BC dry chem that the video recommends. No comparison. Consumer Reports didn't like the other spray can either but didn't go as far as rating it 'don't buy' .
As for the stickup thing (the Rangehood Stovetop Firestop) I expect that it would have gone off much earlier if they'd actually mounted it under a hood, it would have trapped some heat around it and it would have heated up faster. I can see a place for these things, say for someone who can't physically handle an extinguisher, or is going to panic and not be able to function. I would have liked to have had something like this for my grandmother when she starting to show signs of dementia but still living by herself.
The BC rated extinguishers ( and the Kidde K rated unit) all use Sodium Bicarbonate powder ( which is not A rated) The advantage to this over ABC rated Monoammonium Phosphate powder is easier cleanup. K rated WET chemical agents are a whole 'nother animal, and as someone previously stated, are for deep fat fryers and work as they described.
'Nobody ever called the fire department because they did something intelligent'
When my neighbor's car caught on fire in his garage and spread to his lawn mower, his fire extinguisher and my 5lb and 10lb extinguishers lasted just long enough for the fire department to get there.
I bought ten used/recharged 10lb extinguishers from a fire supply place after that, they were $20 each. Might have overreacted a little at the time. Last year 6 of them got used on a grass, fence, and shed fire down the street. When it's dry, a little grass fire goes a long ways.
I'm not sure what the recommended amount of extinguishers to have in a house currently sits at, but I don't think 5 or 6 10lbers is unreasonable.
Last edited by txdpd; 04-09-2017 at 09:14 PM.
Whether you think you can or you can't, you're probably right.
Besides fire extinguishers, I find it appalling that people walk out the door of their house without a knife. Or hang around in the house without one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYjJiHgaLDY
Seemed like a straight claw framing hammer may have been useful that day also to help remove the windshield.
Last edited by Malamute; 04-09-2017 at 09:32 PM.
When I was 6 or 7 I was given my first jackknife, a horn-handled sheepsfoot with a small pen blade on the bottom. I kept it for a long time and only quit carrying it when I got a small Opinel around age 9 or 10, which I carried everywhere until I went to a Kabar of my grandfathers around the age of 16. I have almost no memories in which I would not have been carrying a knife, unless you count when I was on a plane. I find it totally bizarre when people live without knives. I use them constantly. Growing up, a man without a knife would have seemed like a weird dandy to everyone, except maybe this one uncle I had who was a lawyer and I can't recall him ever producing a knife from his pockets.
On the other hand, he fished the oceans around our town a fair bit and once drove himself to the hospital after having his hands severely bitten by a harbour seal, so he may well have had a knife on him as well. I just can't remember him taking one out of his pocket, whereas I can remember most of my uncles' knives. LOTS of Moras. One Gerber springs to mind just because I remember the conversation in which "gerber" was mentioned, and a bunch of stag handled knives of unknown manufacture. But every adult male had a knife and if you didn't, you were weird.
This was about 1985.
This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff
I can relate to that. My grandfather gave me a Case pocketknife when I was eight and told me a man who carries a knife is worth a dollar more an hour. I've carried one every day since.
Last edited by scjbash; 04-09-2017 at 10:53 PM.
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