On a kayaking trip recently we tried to help out a guy with an engine fire. We stopped just after he had pulled over, but the hood was already too hot to be fully opened. It could be popped to the upper latch on the hood release, but not further. I had a 10A5BC extinguisher and I aimed it into the slot under the hood and emptied it as I moved around the perimeter of the hood. The extiguisher sprayed for about 10 seconds. This was enough to subdue the flames, but they soon came up again. A second car with an extinguisher stopped, and we repeated the process with the same effect: a short break in the flames. More cars stopped, but nobody else managed to do anything useful. By the time the fire brigade came about 10min later the whole car was in flames and there was nothing to save. The poor guy had just bought it, and this happened when he was out on his first drive. Some observations: 1/ In this case something flammable was feeding the fire, most likely the fuel pump was still pumping fuel onto the overheated engine. Hence, attempts to stop the fire with small fire extiguishers were futile. 2/ It is not always easy to get access to were the fire is. 3/ Bystanders may not act in the most rational way and may have strange ideas of what is to be done (watched too much TV?) Martin (Now at Johns Hopkins) -- Westy 1.9l Turbo Diesel Quantum 1.6l Turbo Diesel New and used parts for sale, gas and Diesel: http://www.cs.yale.edu/~jag/vw/forsale.html Martin Jagersand email: jag@cs.yale.edu Computer Science Department jag@cs.rochester.edu Yale University Slow down and visit the VW diesel Westy page: WWW: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/vw ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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