"Muddymike" wrote in message
om...
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFj28hoioAc
Truck carrying gas cylinders crashes and catches fire.
From about 2:50 onwards gas cylinders are rocketing in all directions from
the fire.

Good thing they weren't acetylene cylinders. Apparently they are even more
dangerous. When roads and railway lines are closed due to a fire and a
several-hundred metre exclusion zone, it's usually acetylene (and associate
oxygen) cylinders from oxy-acetylene welding kit.

There was a fire at a garage just down the road from me about 8 years ago
and that started in welding equipment - and then spread to the underground
petrol tanks. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/o...re/7219206.stm -
luckily I lived just outside the exclusion zone so I wasn't evacuated, and I
managed to work my way round to the other side (driving several miles to do
what was about 1/4 mile) and took some of the photos in the article. The
noise of the explosions was *very* loud. The fire brigade set up a "paddling
pool" of water into which they could dump any hot acetylene cylinders that
had not exploded, which is not a job you'd get me doing: transporting a
cylinder that could explode at any moment. The garage site was a mess for
several years until insurance and liability was finally sorted out and the
place was rebuilt. A friend's car had a lucky escape: he was due to leave it
there overnight to have a new tyre fitted but decided instead to call back
with the car in the morning, so it escaped going up in flames.

Mind you, even inert compressed gas is dangerous. My A level chemistry
teacher had taught "in industry" before becoming a teacher and he worked in
a building near Heathrow. One of the young engineers (who should have known
better) tried to unscrew the main valve-plus-gauge unit from a big 4-foot
nitrogen cylinder, possibly when he should have been unscrewing a hose from
it. The valve blew off, shot through the ceiling and was found several miles
away just inside the perimeter fence of Heathrow by a routine security
patrol. The cylinder was pushed through the floor and buried itself in the
concrete floor below. No trace of the engineer was found. And that's due to
pressure alone - nitrogen is not flammable.