Sad Story

[HealeyRick]

Here's what's left of Ron Avant's 3000 that burned in his Ongar, Essex, England garage just as he was finishing a seven-year restoration and was being readied to go out for painting. Ron and his wife were hospitalized. Rest of the story: https://www.essexlive.news/ongar-fi...stroys-house/story-29829728-detail/story.html

 

[BJ8Healeys]

That is truly a tragedy. It could only have been worse with more injury to the owner and his wife.
I came close to doing the same thing to my '73 MG Midget last Tuesday after I installed my newly-rebuilt carburetors from Joe Curto. After verifying I had fuel flow to the carbs, I got distracted by another task and neglected to put the fuel feed hose back on. While I was cranking the engine, a huge fire broke out in the engine bay and scared the crap out of me. Damage was minimal due to the two fire extinguishers I had quickly available in the garage (the car was just outside the door), but the beautiful lacquer paint job I applied in 1996 was literally toast on the bottom and top of the bonnet and small areas of the left front wing and firewall. Some rubber and plastic parts got fried or singed, including the brand new accelerator cable I had just installed, and this all required the carbs to be removed and sent back to Joe Curto on Wednesday for disassembly and inspection. He reported on Friday that both jet tubes were gone and he replaced some other miscellaneous parts that were questionable. I should have them back tomorrow or Tuesday and I can then have the car mobile for an estimate for the paint.

Be very careful out there, and always have your extinguisher(s) handy!

 

[simon1966]

Oh My what an awful sobering story. Lessons to be learned from this for sure.

 

[catfood]

This has certainly made me think. My extinguisher is probably well out of date (and too small). Time to let the moths out of the wallet and replace it. So what do folks recommend for a garage - powder, CO2, foam...? and what sort of size as a minimum?

 

[Bob_Spidell]

IMO, nothing beats Halon, but it's not cheap (NFI): https://www.h3rcleanagents.com/h3r-halon-portable-fire-extinguishers.htm

 

[Randy Forbes]

IMO, nothing beats Halon, but it's not cheap (NFI): https://www.h3rcleanagents.com/h3r-halon-portable-fire-extinguishers.htm

+1

Considering that I work on other people's property, to use a dry-chem to put out a minor fire could cause more damage than the fire itself (obviously not in the case of Rick's original post).

Halon, or Halotron, takes away the oxygen, one of the three (3) key components of a fire, and leaves no residue whatsoever. It's the cleanest way to put out a small fire (although, with enough of, and large enough bottles of the stuff, they can snuff out fires in industrial computer rooms and Motor Control Centers).

 

[John Turney]

Caution: It can also snuff out the person holding the extinguisher if it's in a small, enclosed space.

 

[Bob_Spidell]

When I worked at HP's data center, the extinguisher/safety vendor did a demo. He got in an enclosed booth about the size of a phone booth--remember those?--sprayed lighter fluid on an asbestos--or similar, OSHA-approved article--and lit the lighter fluid. With the flame fully engulfing his sleeve, he fired a Halon canister which put the fire out immediately, and he was unharmed.

 

[Randy Forbes]

Caution: It can also snuff out the person holding the extinguisher if it's in a small, enclosed space.

When I worked at HP's data center, the extinguisher/safety vendor did a demo. He got in an enclosed booth about the size of a phone booth--remember those?--sprayed lighter fluid on an asbestos--or similar, OSHA-approved article--and lit the lighter fluid. With the flame fully engulfing his sleeve, he fired a Halon canister which put the fire out immediately, and he was unharmed.

In a former life, I used to work on the safety systems & controls on offshore production platforms and drilling rigs; more than once (Pennzoil, Tenneco and Texaco come immediately to mind...) I dumped the Halon system in their generator bldg and/or MMC rooms. I could barely get my arms around the bottles for the generators, which stood about 5' tall, and the ones for the MMCs looked like the biggest Oxygen bottles you're used to seeing. Nobody ever said how much they cost to refill, but compaed to the price of a 2Lb hand-held extinguisher! I'd just put on my reports that we did a functional test

Bob, I never knew that you could still breath; the one time I was in an MCC__and up on top of the apparatus at the opposite end to where my ladder was__I just took a deep breath, held it and jumped off, heading for the door!

Getting back to the original post, I feel very bad for the owner, not just for ruining his house, but has he now given up any passion he had to restore a car, Healey or otherwise

 

[Bob_Spidell]

Some info on Halon here (again, NFI ... this site comes up first on a google search): https://www.h3rcleanagents.com/support_faq_2.htm#q6

Have to add the demonstrator got out of the booth pretty quick, IIRC. Dunno if you could suffocate in a halon-saturated room with no exit; the FAQ seems to imply otherwise.

 

[HealeyRick]

Some more info here: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20437...toring-caught-fire-and-burned-down-his-house/ Looks like the Healey was a replica and if you look at the pictures I can see the same hairy burnt fiberglass I used to see in burned up Vettes in the junkyard. The fire spread to a natural gas pipe and into the house, so all the hand-held extinguishers in the world probably wouldn't have helped. Ron and his wife were lucky they weren't killed.

 

[DerekJ]

It doesn't say how it started but it could have been electrical. I have a cut off switch on my dash and it is always off when the car is not being used.

 

[BJ8Healeys]

Halon is a chlorofluorocarbon and production of it was discontinued in 1994. I don't believe new halon fire extinguishers are still available. I know that aircraft fire extinguishing systems for U.S. Navy aircraft had transitioned out of halon before I retired in 2004 because of the environmental concerns. The extinguishers I used to put out the fire in my Midget were dry powder, and they do make a mess to clean up. But it was effective, and I would rather clean it up than sweep up the ashes of my car.

 

[HealeyRick]

Although Halon is no longer produced, it is legal to buy and sell and can be recycled. You can most often find new Halon extinguishers in aircraft supply businesses, e.g., https://www.skygeek.com/halon-fire-extinguishers.html

 

[Jim 58 BN6]

Halon is a chlorofluorocarbon and production of it was discontinued in 1994. I don't believe new halon fire extinguishers are still available. I know that aircraft fire extinguishing systems for U.S. Navy aircraft had transitioned out of halon before I retired in 2004 because of the environmental concerns. The extinguishers I used to put out the fire in my Midget were dry powder, and they do make a mess to clean up. But it was effective, and I would rather clean it up than sweep up the ashes of my car.

Somewhere, I remember reading that although they banned making the stuff, the most "environmentally friendly" way to deal with it, since Halon can't be properly disposed of, was to keep using it as a fire extinguishing agent. If it's then needed to protect lives or property, so be it. We went through a real food-fight at work trying to deal with the regulations when they came out, because we used a LOT of Halon fire suppression systems in electronic screen rooms and computer rooms. I think it is still in use in some of those places, and I believe you can still buy new extinguishers that use legacy Halon.

On a side note, my rather cynical brother believes that Freon R12 was banned due to the patent expiring, rather than its environmental concerns. Couldn't be true, could it? Jim

 

[Michael Oritt]

I am always hesitant to dispute what Randy Forbes says but my understanding is that the Halon replacement, as with the original Halon, does not so much displace oxygen as interfere with the combustion process. That said, I would not inhale any fire extinguishing agent on a recreational basis.

BTW I used to have a rather large diesel motorboat that was equipped with a large Halon (the older stuff) fire extinguisher. I was working in the engine room when another person accidentally discharged the system. The agent was invisible but the sound scared the **** out of me and it costed big bucks to refill the tank but I am here to tell the story.

 

[bob hughes]

It is a disaster, and not too uncommon. #

We had a local scare a few years ago when a garage caught fire after some welding had gone on and there were oxyacetylene cylinders there, the whole area was cordoned off whilst the cylinders were left to cool down, thank goodness they did not explode.

There was a guy in the next village who had several old cars in his lockup and had put a pot of paint on a stove to warm up, sadly he overdid it and the paint caught fire with such intensity he could not douse the flames and the lot went up.

I make sure that my car is insured even when it is in bits, not sure how it stands with the insurance company especially after a welding session, but, coming from the construction industry, my CO2 extinguishers are always at hand and I keep a fire watch for at least an our after the job has finished.



Bob

 

[Randy Forbes]

I am always hesitant to dispute what Randy Forbes says but my understanding is that the Halon replacement, as with the original Halon, does not so much displace oxygen as interfere with the combustion process. That said, I would not inhale any fire extinguishing agent on a recreational basis.

BTW I used to have a rather large diesel motorboat that was equipped with a large Halon (the older stuff) fire extinguisher. I was working in the engine room when another person accidentally discharged the system. The agent was invisible but the sound scared the **** out of me and it costed big bucks to refill the tank but I am here to tell the story.

Oh hey, I've been wrong before, there's not even anything special about it

Hence my reference to Halotron in my first post on the subject. The most recent extinguisher I bought (as well as the one carried in the Healey) are marketed by HalGuard as a Premium Clean Agent Fire Extinguisher. Looking at the "contents" of this 2-1/2 Lb unit, it lists only Halotron1 (and that it's under pressure).

While not terribly cheap, they are also not terribly expensive__certainly less than I remember true Halon hand-helds costing (2.5Lb @ $75.99 as one of the first to pop up on a Google search). Waaay less than the cost of a car or house!

Halotron1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halotron_I

 

[Michael Oritt]

No sooner did I send out my last post than the guy who services the fire extinguishers for the landlord of my warehouse came by to check mine.
I asked him the question--does Halon (and/or its replacement) displace or deplete oxygen versus stopping the combustion process and he answered yes to the first--that oxygen is in fact displaced and that suffocation is an option! So there ya go--Randy you were correct as usual.

 

[Keoke]

Sorry TOO,
But a LB of caution is worth a Ton of cure.