Idly sat in a waiting room and realised that I don’t think I know anyone who has ever used a fire extinguisher in a real putting out a fire type situation. Anyone ever done it – happened across a smouldering waste paper basket, whipped an extinguisher off the wall and given it both barrels? (Note – Fire Service types who use big red painted extinguishers with blue lights and wheels need not apply, but thanks for being there).

I’ve done it as part of fire safety training – the guys realised we were pretty bored and suggested we do it to familiarise ourselves with the equipment.

It’s pretty underwhelming actually…

Twice here, 1st time was when an out of control taxi crashed into the 4 star pump on my petrol station forecourt at 2 in the morning & again when the toaster caught fire on G wing one Saturday morning. (which woke everyone up)
Contrary to popular belief, petrol stations do not explode when vehicles crash into them.

Used one in fire training in the prison service as well.

Yes – when a washing machine caught fire.

Wife set fire to the kitchen, used the extinguisher we keep in the cupboard to put it out.

Tip don’t leave the kitchen roll sitting on the extractor hood

Yes, on quite a large oil/grease fire… But fortunately on the opposite side of an asbestos wall so not really ‘tackling it head on’…

Also used a quick burst of CO2 to put out residual flames in an electrical panel, but again not really too exciting.

Most fires tend to be as well controlled by kicking somewhere safe and letting it burn out or smothering/stamping out.

Yes I do it for a living! 🙂

you know when you get takeaway pizza and it says to reheat in the oven if required? If you are stoned and stupid and put it under the gas grill it will catch fire. If you live in a nice rental house with good fire doors you wont knwo anything about this until the room is ful of smoke and there is fire coming out of the cooker.

At which point your hero mate jimmy jumps into action, turns off the gas and blasts the cooker with a dry powder extinguisher.

The end result is 15 seconds later the fire is out, the kitchen is covered in white dust and everyone thinksjimmy over reacted.

I also broke a door with one once and pulled a guy out of a burning house, but he never said thanks.

Done it a couple of times.

Check extinguisher is appropriate for the job. (I’ve had to stop people using water ones on electrical fires before)

Point squirty thing at base of fire.

Squirt away.

Not used a fire extinguisher but I have had to improvise and put out a real fire.

I was degreasing my drivetrain at the kitchen sink. Unbeknown to me the wife had lit a candle nearby. Once the degreaser fumes reached the candle everything ignited including a big pile of degreaser soaked rags and my degreaser soaked body and clothes.

Absolutely pat my shants! The heat was unreal. Managed to soak a dishtowel under the tap and smother the pile of rags then dealt with the flames on me!

I’m going to try for a bit of top trumps – directed in a helicopter water drop on a forest fire, Northumberland ’91 8)

Best fire extinguisher ever.

No but I have knocked over a full and very much alight meths stove over onto a testing rig (gas hob with lip around edge) which resulted in a five burner sized rectangilar wall of flame.

If you throw a very dry cotton tea towel over it you have quite an effective candle.

Yes – I was gas welding a car floor and managed to cut through the fuel pipe on the other side!!

I used the fire extinguisher to put out the huge puddle of petrol that was alight under the car. I was about 20 and it scared me so badly it took half an hour for my heart rate to drop back to normal.

I tell my crew what to do, try not to get involved that much.

yeah, at my school in year 10, someone set a toilet roll on fire in the bogs, que tonnes of smoke and the IT teacher running (very funny but another story altogether) towards me with two fire extinguishers, was a bit of a blur but I took one off him and we both ran in and put the fire out, tbh it would likely have burnt itself out as it was attached a metal wall and it was just the plastic/loo roll on fire

Gas welding merrily under the rotten floor of my Peugeot 305 van many moons ago, I set the centre console wiring alight.

I sprayed it with a dry powder extinguisher, my dad wasn’t too chuffed as it cost £35 to refill. Worse than that, whatever the powder is made of is very fine and quite corrosive and got into all the switchgear and the lights, wipers etc all stopped working over the following weeks. The van was scrap shortly afterwards. TBH, like most of my vehicles back then, it was scrap before I bought it really. 🙂

Yes twice
Once on training and once for real

TOP TIP: ig you really must use a powder fire extinguisher in small space like say a boat or a caravan what will happen is one second you will have a fire and the next second you will have no fire, no ability to breathe and no ability to see making your escape nigh on impossible. It will take weeks to clear up the shitty mess it made . I think I would have preffered the fire damage tbh and just have switched the gas off.

Yep I work manage a clothing factory and one of the trousers presses had an electrical fire.
Used the appropriate powder extinguisher and the aftermath looked as though someone had shook a giant talcum powder everywhere, took days to clean up!!

EDIT Wish I had seen the advice above all those years ago 😉

Twice in training, once for real, which was a very small fire. This holds a lesson: on a drilling barge the boss ordered little throwaway extinguishers fitted everywhere. There was always one within feet of you. He said if you can get to it quickly, before it’s big, it’s less of a problem, easily dealt with. He was right. Still had the regular big ones of course. A little Halon jobbie fixed a coil of mooring line set alight by weld / gas axe mishap.

Yonks ago in the office the same boss organised a training session with the extinguisher supply and maintenance Co. Anyone could go. Talk and then hands on. Fire blankets and CO2 and foam, ISTR. The office staff loved it. Gossip after said they all kitted their kitchens with the gear.

Point squirty thing at base of fire.

Unless its a foam type in which case you fire it over the top to settle on it.

Powder extinguishers should be given a bang off the deck to loosen the powder. Always do this with the extinguisher pointing axially away from you or anyone else lest the bottom is rotten and it turns rocket.

ABC powder is foul stuff, use as much as you need, dont take the piss especially in a kitchen.

Never use water based extinguishers on nuclear fuel, its a moderator and you’ll just make things worse, find a sodium chloride one instead.

CO2 extinguisher heads may be combined with a water cooler bottle to make the ultimate, er, water filter. Yeah water filter, thats what it was…

Couldn’t find a hose so used a couple of old ones to wash the concrete out of the dumper once. Very handy. Does that qualify?

Yes.CO2 on a smouldering 110v transformer. Keep hands off the horn, unless you don’t want to put it down quickly.

Twice. Both times at work. Both times I was admonished for doing so by the management.
The first time because I had used a dry powder in a confined space -a student had pushed a plastic bag into an electric heater in a portakabin, the bag was well alight and making a lot of fumes, The paint on the heater and the wall behind were smoking badly, I turned the power off and used the extinguisher- they said it would have burnt out so should have left it. Their main complaint was the mess, didn’t seem worried by all the students in the room who I got out first.
The second was in a classroom after the end of the normal day, caused almost certainly by a caretaker chucking an illicit cigarette into a waste bin full of paper(!), it caused a great deal of smoke, I used a water extinguisher and this time I was told I shouldn’t have tackled the fire and should have waited for the fire brigade.

Yep, used one off of my bus to put a car engine fire out in the City of london. Had to take the bus out of service after that, punters weren’t amused 🙂

😯

Halon were banned in 2003, I hope this was many many years ago.

It is illegal to own one, unless you have exemption.

Many years ago I did some motorsport fire marshal training.

I was never called upon to do it in anger.

We used ours to ambush the overnight shift operators between the computer room and the loo. Never got tired of it over about 3 months of night-shifts. Did receive a telling off from the ops director when a extinguisher audit showed ours to be about 1/4 full 🙂 That’s not really putting out a fire tho although the people we did it too were a bit incandescent 🙂

Did get very nearly trapped in same computer room one xmas day when some idiot managed to set the Halon off. That was briefly very exciting.

Yip. A few times. I’ve used the damp cloth to put out a liquid fire too on many occassions.

Couple of years ago we had fire safety training and some woman managed to discharge a full CO2 cylinder and still fail to put out a toaster fire.

Due to an administrative cock up, the entire first team turned up at the rugby club for a match, but no-one else did. No refs, no opponents, no manager, etc. So, what were we do do? Obvious! ‘Facilitate’ access to the clubhouse / changing rooms and have a fire extinguisher water fight. Verdict was that the water tasted a ‘bit funny’

Guess this doesn’t really count though!

jury rigged a few CO2 ones to make blocks of dry ice needed for a science telly show

Couple of years ago we had fire safety training and some woman managed to discharge a full CO2 cylinder and still fail to put out a toaster fire.

In a anecdote too long to go into here… a friend of mine set fire to the roof of what is now the Tate Modern. The lengthy anecdote ends with him chasing the flames across the tar roof with a CO2 extinguisher then as the gas ran out running back to get the next one and the flames following him all the way back… repeat.

did fire marshall training once and I got the fire blanket – which involved walking towards an bloody hot oil burner with a blanket held up so you couldn’t see what you were walking towards…. not fun

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L80NhEqoZLY[/video]

http://www.coldcutsystems.com/about-coldcut-cobra

Supposed to be getting this soon, wonder how long before we take someones limb off.

Powder when I decided, unwisely, that the best way to dispose of a jar of contaminated fuel would be to use a match – and it burned bigger and longer than I expected. Everything people say about the mess in a confined space is also true outdoors with the added fun of the wind blowing it around.

And also a CO2 extinguisher in a chemistry lab, which blew the burning apparatus along the bench and destroyed itself on to the floor where I finished the job.

Halon were banned in 2003, I hope this was many many years ago

My story (see above) involved a Halon extinguisher but it was pre-2003 😆

Yep several times.
I used to marshal at 4×4 events and used a couple of small ones on burning rover V8s.

Used one at scout camp to control a rather unruly campfire.

Does taking one off the wall to put on the floor to prop a door open, only to accidentally spray it all over my bosses PC in the office count?

I had a powder extinguisher sat on the end of my workbench in the garage, knocked it off. It landed on the corner of a trolley jack which pierced the side of it.

Had to evacuate myself from the garage and stand outside while it filled with white fog.

Took a while to clean it up!

I was filling my car with fuel at Sainsburys when I noticed an old Triumph 1500 on fire on the access road.

Grabbed a couple of extinguishers and ran up to it. Interior was completely filled with smoke and flames coming out of the bonnet but I couldn’t see anyone near the car.

Then a confused elderly face appeared at the drivers window – he was still in there 🙁

Got him out and then heard coughing – his wife was still sat in the passenger seat with her seat belt on!

So got her out too and discharged a couple of extinguishers in to the radiator grill but they didn’t have much effect – firefighters had to pop the bonnet with a big crow bar to get access when they turned up.

Oh, and driving to work one day – Ford Granada with the bonnet up and flames shooting out of the carb. I had an extinguisher as the car had been used for historic rallies so went over and put it out. Was chatting to the owner when a fire engine with blues and twos on went sailing past looking for a car that was on fire.

Only in a training environment.

Never use water based extinguishers on nuclear fuel, its a moderator and you’ll just make things worse, find a sodium chloride one instead.

Must remember that next time I accidentally set fire to a piece of uranium 🙂