On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 22:05:08 GMT, Don Bruder wrote:
In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

Ayup. I've seen video of a propane tank doing the BLEVE (boiling
liquid, expanding vapor explosion) trick, and it's impressive...
and something to avoid being near...

We got lucky and avoided at least *THAT* particular problem when the
house burned down a couple years ago. Fire guys were *REAL* interested
in knowing where the (recently topped off in preparation for the
oncoming winter) 300+ gallon propane tank was when they first got here,
and once located, kept a hose on it for the duration.

Yep. There's a vent on the top (round pipe looking thing a few inches
high) that is _supposed to_ open when the tank pressure is high. We had
a fire where that was venting, and near the fire, of course it was a
hella-big torch. That was fine, really, we didn't mind. Kept a hose on
the tank, so the surface stayed wet (below boiling point of water on the
outside = not too hot on the inside). We weren't nervous until the
venting stopped, because there's no way to know if it was just empty (it
was), or if the vent had melted shut or something. There was some
pucker-factor at that one.

Stuff further from
the house than the tank was bursting into flames with no visible source
of ignition just because of the radiant heat from the fire - most of the
fire-crew effort went to keeping the surrounding vegetation and such
from catching - The house was already a total write-off 20 minutes or
more before they actually managed to arrive.

Been there, done that. Don't like it. One of our house fires started
in an unattended house on a day with 40 MPH winds. Can you say
"blowtorch"? The only thing we could do, as you say, was protect the
exposures.

(Absolutely no intent to
slam the FD for poor response time should be imagined - I have a very
firm grasp on the reality that it's a 30 minute drive from here to the
nearest fire station when I "leadfoot" it in my little semi-sports car -

Whic means 45 minutes by tanker, or more. Those things drive like,
well, like things that are really big, slow, and filled with water.

"Only" 45 minutes from the call to 911 to seeing a "ready-for-action"
firetruck pull onto the property is doing *EXTREMELY* well indeed.)

Long time when you're on the calling end of the phone, though.

The two portable propane tanks hooked up under the grill that was
sitting on the deck vented with a roar like a ****ed off dragon, backed
with what I'd estimate to be a 30+ foot long tounge of flame, but
fortunately they didn't BLEVE, or I imagine we'd have lost the other two
vehicles and probably a couple of the horses along with everything else
that burned in the house.

Saved the horses? Fantastic. That was another fire recently, at a
horse barn. The kind of place where people board their horses, maybe 40
or 50 of 'em. Not a good ride to that fire, let me tell you. But, they
all got out. Barn was a total loss, and housing was a bit tight in the
county for a bit, but there ya go.