Fire in car burns for a minute without any of the seven nearby mechanics noticing

Originally published at: Fire in car burns for a minute without any of the seven nearby mechanics noticing | Boing Boing

3 Likes

Is there supposed to be an embed of, or a link to, a video?

1 Like

The link leads to the BoingBoing Wordpress login page. I guess the implication is we’re suppose to locate the video, hack into the site, and post the link ourselves.

11 Likes

There’s an embed to a Facebook video. This should be a direct link to the post:
https://fb.watch/7eiQtdz6Fw/

1 Like

I would have expected more and larger fire extinguishers.
And one of them right next to the welder.

Next point: don’t open any door between you and a fire like that.

17 Likes

Ah. Thanks Facebook Container. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Did you check that door for heat, Tim?

4 Likes

Yeah. Okay, he could see the fire, and it was a small fire in a little “room”, but still.
I experienced the visitor’s version of a simulated flashover at a training facility for firefighters and that was impressive enough.

4 Likes

weld away or worlds away

Benefit of the doubt, all those guys are standing on a plane that’s almost 3 meters (British) under the car’s windowsill. The angle of vision, even from eyeballs at almost 2 meters, is not going to see what’s going on until the fire is raging. The car seemed to contain the smoke pretty well, too.

8 Likes

10 Likes

Welding a car in an auto repair shop shouldn’t be such a rare occurrence that there are no training skills or safety procedures in place for preventing setting the car on fire. Anyone know what happened here that shouldn’t have?

3 Likes

Well, I’m guessing that if the interior of your car is burning, molten plastic, the car is a write-off.

1 Like

Slapping wheels on a Tetra Pak and calling it a car? /s

6 Likes

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if it’s British, it’s a metre.

7 Likes

That’s generally very good advice, but in this case, the front window was open, so the fire was already getting oxygen it wanted. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Downside of recreational marijuana?

It’s like a scene out of Top Gear.

2 Likes

Fire always wants more oxygen. Opening the door enabled the fire to suck in air from below, which it couldn’t do before. Chimney effect. Can make the fire burn hotter.
Flames leaping out were a real possibility.

From his position he couldn’t see what exactly was burning behind the door - just the upholstery of the back seat, or the interior trim, or something left on the seat or in the footwell?

A lot of plastic materials make for burning droplets falling or even flying around when they are small/light enough and get caught in a draft.
Not something you’d want to land anywhere on you.

Then there is the heat that was blocked by the door. Radiated heat can burn you, singe or ignite your clothing just as well as an open flame.

My guess is that the heat from the weld ignited the upholstery, i.e. foam, of the back seat - no open flame, just the heat from the weld conducted by the steel body. The smoke looks like burning foam to me, anyway.

Fire is law unto itself and never harmless.

6 Likes

I’m not sure what the alternative would have been, other that opening the door so they’d have access to where the fire was concentrated. They only had so much time to work with until the gas tank blew. The front window was open but there wasn’t a good angle for them to aim the fire extinguisher into the back, especially since the car was still a couple feet off the ground. There was a bit of a flare-up but nothing like would have happened in probably another 20 seconds when the tank went.