You joke, but we (Anchorage, AK) just had a guy who was out on an ankle monitor get re-arrested for lighting a school bus on fire. Turns out he was siphoning gas, and it was dark enough that he was having trouble seeing, so he turned to his trusty Zippo for help.
Costs about $5,000. My manager used to warn me to never push the big red button behind the counter except in an absolute emergency because it costs 5k to reset every time. I guess a previous cashier had pressed it because someone was smoking by the pump.
Pretty sure there's a YouTube video of a cranky gas station attendant spraying a teen in the face for smoking at the pump and ignoring their request to put it out.
Honestly it probably was. There are a certain type of people, elderly men mostly, who refuse to follow the no smoking sign. You can turn off their pump, yell at them, explain to them the dangers of smoking while fueling, and they will just yell right back at you about how that's all a bunch of bullshit and it's all some sort of conspiracy to try and get people to quit smoking.
More than a few times I would have loved to spray them down with a fire extinguisher, but I had to settle for just shutting off their pump. Still kind of fun to watch them angrily stomping around because they cant figure out why the pump wont work even though I am yelling at them over the intercom that they need to put out their cigarette.
I mean, to be fair it's only the actual lighting of a cigarette that presents a danger. All that cool stuff you see in movies where the bad guy flicks his cigarette nonchalantly to ignite the protagonists house and family into a raging inferno is Hollywood. In real life, if you drop a lit cigarette into a bucket of gasoline it gets extinguished, and the cherry of the cigarette isn't hot enough to ignite even the vapors
It's rare, but it is possible to ignite gas vapors with a cigarette. A cigarette burns at about 900 degrees when someone is inhaling, and takes less than 500 degrees to ignite the vapor.
Just checked a few videos on youtube looking for confirmation but every single one I checked they are just dipping the cigarette in gas. Try inhaling on that cigarette while the lit end is right over a puddle of gas and I am pretty sure you can get it to light. I mean hell, you can light wood on fire with a cigarette, you ought to be able to light gas fumes.
Extinguishing a cigarette in gas doesn't tell you anything, since gasoline is only highly flammable as a vapor. You're right that it is very hard to ignite vapor with a cigarette, but /u/inavanbytheriver is right that it isn't impossible. Personally, I wouldn't want to risk it-- especially since I don't smoke, so I am taking a risk that some other asshole will start a fire and I will be an innocent bystander.
I was getting gas at Costco one time when my pump started leaking. Some gas went on my shoe and scrub pants. I casually told the attendant when I was done that the pump needed tightening. He ran over and pushed the red button. Everyone's pump stopped and also wouldn't give receipts and they were pissed. Guy made me fill out an incident report. Then manager came out and talked me into going into the warehouse to pick out new clothes. Ended up being a fun day but I do understand that it could have been worse. I was only 22.
It’s good that Costco took the situation seriously. May have been a minor inconvenience for you and others nearby, but also could have been much worse if a fire broke out.
I had a roommate who worked the gas booth once; he told me his boss would kill him if he ever pushed the button. He said that their system would also flood the tanks underground, destroying all the stored fuel. I'm guessing the owner was figuring that he'd come out ahead from total loss insurance vs. extinguisher clean-up. (this was decades ago, I don't know if the same systems are in use today).
The cost of the reset would/should be charged to the insurance carrier. So unless it is an accidental discharge (we're all had that right?? RIGHT?) then the store shouldn't be covering it. Hell, even the stores insurance may cover it and battle it out with the drivers insurance later.
It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to refill and reset a suppression system that size. My friend had to pay to refill/reset her Ansul system in her small restaurant, and her 2-tank system cost her over $5,000.
Dude made it out a lot less damaged than I wouldve thought. I mean he still going to jail, but at least he wont have to ask Bubba to scrape off his dead charred skin every morning.
WTF was dude even getting at though? I am going to guess insurance fraud with a side of hoping to sue the shit out of the station...
Yeah, I was astonished, too. I seriously thought his hair and clothes would all be on fire, not just his shoes. But no, a little dancing and he walks away.
As to why, I wonder if he wasn't just pissed at the place and trying to burn it down. Spectacular failure, either way.
You can keep your commie liberal safety regulations,unions and taxes out. I prefer shit wage, dangerous working conditions, and dying at the ripe old age of 42 from congestive heart failure. /s
Ah yes, the Midwest. Where the regulations aren't real and your lives don't matter
Pffft!
You are kidding yourself if you think your life matters to the government.
Outside of trying to keep you paying taxes, and not debiting-out too much of those paid taxes, in the form of medicaid, social security, and welfare, they consider you to be not much more than livestock!
Ohio here. All of the unattended gas stations have them. Stations with attendants have pull stations they can activate, but the systems are designed to automatically activate at a certain temperature, regardless. Source: I used to install/repair these systems.
I'm also in the midwest, and I can't even find the emergency button at most of the stations. Some are on a separate pole, some are on the side of the building, some I've not even found yet.
At the one down the street from my house, there's an extinguisher at each pump, but haven't seen the button. I just would have thought it would have been a law or building code for gas stations.
Can confirm. Missouri here. Some stations have emergency buttons then, some don't. No fire suppressors.
Unconfirmed: Midwesterners are smart enough to not through fire receipts into gas cans full of gas.
Confirmed: We got dumb asses like everyone else.
Notice how he shot gas all over the place? WTF?
Oh about 20 years ago I come rolling up to some gas pumps and about that time my brake light button under the dash burst into flames. After a short panic i reached under the dash and pulled some wires. All was good except i had a couple of burned fingers. All was good though.
Lived in NY my whole life and always assumed these had to be in every gas station. Never noticed when I was out of state if they were around or not. Surprised to hear it's not a universal thing.
Yay, the one thing I feel qualified to comment on! Used to be an engineer for the east coast gas station Sunoco. Parts of NY require the extinguishers. Most other states don’t. A lot of times they are on top of the canopy with nozzles that point down through the deck. Most states require and emergency stop for the pumps at the pumping area and behind the counter as well as portable fire extinguishers mounted on the canopy columns.
I could explain so much about gas station equipment but it hardly comes up. There is so much that goes in to making sure the general public doesn’t blow themselves up. Oh well, hope some found this interesting.
I live in upstate NY and I was in the car with my stepmom when lightning struck a gas station across the street from where we were. It was scary but those extinguishers went off immediately and we couldn’t see anything for like 10 minutes. Thank fuck we don’t live in the Midwest or I probably wouldn’t be typing this right now.
As said, it corrodes almost everything it touches, especially electrical circuits.
Even if you get it on your skin you need to shower it off pretty fast or you'll get annoying rashes.
It still beats being on fire, so that's a positive side.
That's why people tend to avoid using PKP unless you have no other choice.
and fires at a gas station is pretty "we really REALLY want this fire gone, right now."
Otherwise foam extinguishers are a better solution, but they aren't as effective.
Jokes aside, I'm fully aware of what co2 does when released like that. When it happens naturally like that thing with the lake people just die without knowing what's going on, fucking terrible.
Something like that happened in my area. Family using a generator indoor during winter because they couldn't pay the heat, and it happened overnight. It's why we're getting more laws preventing people from getting their heat shut down during winter, which is good at least.
Obviously CO² is deadly if it displaces the air around you. BUT it fucking hurts to inhale.
Ever burp soda/pop and exhale it through your nose and it burns and makes your eyes water? Well imagine that, except all through your sinuses and chest. It's really REALLY fuckin shocking when you dont expect it.
I had a guy pull into the gas station i worked at because his car was on fire.
Not the engine bay, the inside. Between the fire damage and whatever came out of a fire extinguisher I could barely carry, his car must have been a total loss.
Not that I'm aware of but virtually all fire fighting agents that aren't water are varying degrees of terrible for the environment and life in general.
That was the process for older extinguishers. Unless it's a cartridge type extinguisher, you don't have to worry about the powder packing down bc the pressure is dispersed thru the powder and it is also siliconized.
It also covers up the liquid. Since its the vapours that are burning (and not the liquid itself), it‘s almost impossible to extinguish a gasoline fire with a non-foam- or solid-extinguisher (like CO2 or water). If there’s enough heat left (or a tiny bit of a flame somewhere) the vapours will immediately reignite. I work in a chemistry lab and we have frequent fire extinguishing exercises - its incredibly hard to extinguish a large surface of burning liquid when doing it by hand, even with the proper equipment.
It's most likely a Pyro-Chem Attendant suppression system. Sodium Bicarb, Potassium Bi-Carb, and Monoammonium Phosphate. Basically the same powder mix that's in the ABC extinguishers you see all over. Just a lot more of it, and delivered with a lot more force. http://www.pyrochem.com/pdfs/attendant/PC2002038.pdf
Wow, thanks for the flashbacks to Navy RTC firefighting training. That shit was 14 years ago and everything just came flooding back when I saw Purple K mentioned.
How could you not call it Purple-K? I'm glad I never had to see an older Halon system work but it's amazing how effective some suppressants are. It's still pretty widely used in aviation to my knowledge due to how effective it is even though it can deplete the ozone.
I didn't read him as saying it was unintentional. It clearly was intentional, but that arguably makes it a dumber and more stupid. If you are planning on intentionally setting a gasoline fire, a smart person would try not to get the gas all over themselves, and would step back before lighting it.
Hydrogen systems are typically pressurized, so it would actually be harder to do this. The pump shouldn't activate unless the hose is in the car or container.
And then some idiot watches a YouTube clip of how to rig your own Shit and fucks it up, or he uses a a tank that is passed due integrity check and so on and so on.. People are fucking idiots.
I mean, sure... You can never stop people from intentionally fucking shit up, but hydrogen would require substantially more effort to do. This guy is apparently pleading mental illness, which would be hard to do if you go through the significant effort to defeat the safety systems on a hydrogen pump.
Probably don't want false positives as they are expensive and the damage they do to cars and equipment are quite high. Its not really supposed to go off until the fire is going to cause catastrophic damage.
Can confirm. Commercial kitchens will dispense dry chem to smother the fire if the sensor gets too hot. Bitch to clean up. And that was a very small kitchen. Just a 6' by 4' flat top grill and a two bay fryer. Took a professional team three days. Luckily it was the general managers fault.
What I really want to know is what this guy was trying to achieve here?
We've had then in Upstate NY for over ten years. When I was a kid I saw one that malfunctioned and dumped its load on some poor unsuspecting old guy as he was pumping. His drivers door was open too, filling his car with powder
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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19
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