DOH !!!

From Essex County Fire & Rescues Website:-

Incident No:3620
Date:25-02-2012
Time:11:21
Details:Fire in a fuse box
Address:Magdalen Green, Thaxted
Attendance:1 x Thaxted, 1 x Saffron Walden
Firefighters are warning people not to throw water over any fire which involves electricity, The warning follows this incident in which a man threw a bucket of water over his blazing fuse box.
Sub Officer Steve Morris said: "The man got a minor shock, but he was lucky, this could have killed him.
"No one should ever throw water over a fire involving electricity. It is the perfect way to get a potentially lethal electric shock."
The fire was out on arrival and crews called for the electricity board to come to the property and isolate the supply.

Obviously the bucket of water worked as the fire was out on arrival of the crews,

CO2 or powder anyone

Stu

Must have been smart water.

'Smart water', lol,

I was once shown how the Fire crew deal with fires in close proximity to HV cables. They change the furious/continuous flow to a sprinkler flow.
If the water had left the bucket before it hit the electricity then the chances of a shock are greatly reduced.

The demonstration was quite effective.

Legh

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Why do we need Vernier Calipers when we have container ships?

http://www.leghrichardson.co.uk

"Science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space - but any objections."

Known as "fogging" I believe Legh - the small droplet size aids easy evaporation and the latent heat of vapourization during the process effectively takes away heat from the fire coupled with adding water vapour that reduces teh combustible mix - you reduce one or more of the sides of a fire triangle - heat, fuel and oxygen.

That's whay "steam" fire fighting lances are common in some applications - maritime for example.

Regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

Picture the scene, a large, 2 stand rolling mill in the steel tube works is being refurbished during the shutdown period. There was a full bucket of paraffin oil at ground level, this was used for degreasing etc., together with a large bag of cleaning rags. There was a large gang of us around; a fitter is using an acetylene torch on a platform at high level.

Yes you guessed it, there was a fire and one of the labourers threw the bucket of "water" on it. Fortunately with no serious results.

Regards