What sort of ‘projectiles’? – IOTW Report

What sort of ‘projectiles’?

Thursday, 5 November 2020, 17:45 MJA Uncategorized 16

What am I talking about? THIS. <—-

[The story is a blast from the past]

16 Comments on What sort of ‘projectiles’?

  2. Firefighters could have said, “Sorry, we can’t come”

    Instead they showed up and were all like, “Get a load of this”

    Then the factory thanked the firemen, “Thanks for coming”

    And when they left, “That’s the last time I’m coming here”

    Then the factory got billed, “That’ll cost a load”

    5

  7. I remember at my uncle’s farm when I was a teenager.
    The vet was about to artificially inseminate one of the cows. I left the barn when he put on the glove up to his elbow.

    4

  8. Newsweek Headline:
    “Massive Semen Explosion after Blaze Hits Bull Artificial Insemination Facility, Firefighters Forced to Dodge Projectiles”

    Q. Why are they artificially inseminating bulls?
    A. Because bulls don’t swing that way.

    Maybe it was the bulls that set the place on fire.

    2

  12. …yeah, we’ve been here before…

    https://iotwreport.com/fighting-a-fire-fueled-by-bull-semen/

    …but it just makes this easier…

    …OK, THIS one’s a bit out of my experience as a FF/EMT, although the line “Heated Bull Semen” certainly evokes an image that doesn’t really go first to firefighting aspects of this, but there ARE some issues that could be common to other types of fires, so they deserve some consideration outside of the obvious “funny” aspects of this, so…

    First of all, it’s a fire. Fires are inherently dangerous no matter WHAT the structure is that’s burning. Structural loads change, supports weaken in asymmetrical fashion, floors and ceilings can NOT be trusted.

    THIS fire is obviously a biohazard issue, as I am fairly confident that bull semen can conduct diseases, some of which may cross over to humans. If you get any on you, it’s tough to determine forensically if it has any such potential or not, since you’re not going to discover it until well after the fact.

    Turnout gear does provide some protection, as there is generally a layer of rubberized protection in everything including the gloves, but it is NOT biohazard occlusive, and you DO have to take it OFF sometime, which will bring you (or someone) into contact with the outer layer. You can deploy standard hazardous materials protocols, such as requiring your firefighters to shower in hose water and a containment system after coming off the line, but this may be tricky because many rural departments do not have that kind of manpower, and the fire is not patient. It would be typical for a man to come out, grab another air bottle, then back at it, and this has the potential of contamination while you’re doing it.

    The cylinders are not helping. This is what’s called a “BLEVE”, or a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion, and it’s one of the most dangerous things a firefighter may face. A confined liquid will boil when heated, and if it’s confinement has no pressure relief, it will explode quite violently – and unpredictably – when it exceeds the stresses on the container that it was never designed for. This can destroy entire neighborhoods when hydrocarbons are involved, but this is small containers and limited (I would THINK) quantities of actual bull semen boiling, but the cryogen is likely the culprit here as it is probably a liquid that does NOT take well to heating. This can obviously drive infected spikes of container material through the doughiest turnouts, and there are places that the Kevlar components don’t cover anyway, particularly where the Nomex hood is around the face and neck, so you might not get any damping at all. It could also send one of those spikes right through a face mask, and wouldn’t THAT be a treat.

    The only way to offset this is by applying water directly to the container. Unfortunately, this requires you get CLOSE to it.

    And you can’t tell by looking how CLOSE it is to rupturing.

    Depending on how it blows out, or up, it may just lose a welded end and launch at you like a missile. One of the coolest things I’ve seen like that involved propane propellant, which is – or at least, WAS – pretty common in cooking sprays like PAM. We were called to a house where the homeowner reported a loud explosion in their kitchen, but no concomitant fire. We looked and saw a perfectly normal gas range with a metal disk in the center of a corona of scorch marks, and a nice, regular hole in the ceiling above it. We found the remains of a PAM can loged in the attic joists. What happened was that someone set the can down in the center of the stove, which was where the pilot light was, and even with the stove OFF it happiliy heated the contents of the can – including the propane propellant – to it’s boiling point. The can broke pretty evenly along it’s bottom seam, and a missile was launched from the base of a thousand meals for a change in pace.

    Now multiply that by all the bull semen in storage. And make it bull semen instead of PAM. And place it in an industrial fireground.

    No.

    Thanks.

    Good on those Aussies for dealing with that effectively. Not something you directly train for, obviously.

    It may have been very costly, too, depending on the determination of hazard. Again, not a direct comparison, but we had a company with a fire in a place that made printing ink. This contaminated every hose and turnout that entered the plant. It was determined that it was not possible to clean them to the point where they would be like uncontaminated and safe for re-use, so they were destroyed and replaced.

    THAT is very, very expensive.

    …I guess Australia has taxpayers like America does, though, and they’ll be paying for bull-semen carelessness for many, many years to, eh, “Come”, if so…

  13. Blowing the shit out of that whale is such a classic, it still makes me laugh every time I see it. Just like the famous line in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid when they blew up the mail car while robbing the train, “You think you used enough dynamite there Butch.”

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