The car fire you never want to deal with.

Fuel fires can be tricky. How would you handle this situation?

[AdmiralBlackstar]

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."-Picard

[esans]

what a coincidence! I also don't like flaming things in my palm!

[Toepferle]

Something our mindsets and media doesn't really understand anymore: Doing the right thing doesn't necessarily mean you are successful...

[brylythhighlights]

Big respect for the guy who had the presence of mind to hold on to the container of fuel as they backed away instead of just dropping it while they ran

[deoyx]

I'm so glad a professional gave him kudos. He was more put together than I've seen in a lot of people.

[smokingdog]

Craigslist description
“Slightly used, only 10k miles, no rust, runs fine, never had any problems with it.”

[stinkyham]

A few years ago I had an electrical panel catch on fire on me at work (wasn't my fault). I ran around the corner and grabbed an extinguisher, checked it was an ABC and then shot it at the panel. To my horror it seemed to make it worse, so I shot it again and once again it made it worse. That's when I decided I had done all I could, pulled the fire alarm, ran up stairs to the buildings office and told the single employee to get out if the building. I went out front and turned the gas to the building off (I'm a gas fitter which is why I was in the building in the first place). 90 seconds later the fire trucks pulled up and the fire fighters had me show them where the electrical panel was. They had it out in 2 seconds with some type of different extinguisher I didn't have access to but only after they had killed power to the whole basement floor. They told me I had done everything correct but I never had a chance with the panel being live and the wimpy little extinguisher I had didn't help etheir. God bless these guys.

[MrMartinSchou]

I hadn't seen the video, but it is awesome to see a professional fireman explain how you can be doing the right thing and still be fucked five ways to Sunday.

[dreamwolf]

My local garage has a whole protocol for working fuel lines, including using an enclosed, grounded, pump line to remove as much fuel as possible before draining the rest, grounding the car, and the mechanic to avoid sparks.

As a precaution, they layer a fire retardant absorbative chemical powder below the work area.

Why? Because the guy who runs the garage is a retired NYFD Captain who does not take chances.

He also does ATV repairs, and doesnt charge an arm, leg, and your first born to do it.

[timesnewlogan]

Maybe it's just me, but there are few things more cathartic than being told that even though a situation was bad, you did everything right.

[nichmiller]

Calling the owner like: "The good news is that we're done with your car. The bad news is that so are you."

[Cyberdynemodel]

Imagine being that service manager. Having to make that phone call.

[JimsEquipmentShed]

“Hey, uh about that bad fuel line eh, as it turns out, you don’t need to replace that anymore.”
~ cartoon legs it out of the managers office and down the road.

[RobR]

Customer: "is my car finished?"

Garage: "Yeah, the fire brigade has just finished putting it out."

[johnathansaegal]

Back in the late 1940s my dad (only a toddler) had his house burn down on Christmas Eve. All seven kids and both parents escaped unharmed, but my dad never forgot the fear and decades it took for his poor (literally poor) family to get back on their feet and into a new house.
Fast forward, my dad is now grown with a family of his own. My mom knew about the fire, they were childhood friends since Mom was about four. My brother and I? Well, we never stopped hearing about the fire on Christmas Eve and my dad was super, if not hyper vigilant about fire safety. He bought many fire extinguishers for our three bedroom house and taught my brother and I how to properly use a fire extinguisher when we were so small we could barely lift the bottles.
Every year he would have us go through fire extinguishing drills when we would go camping. He would let a campfire get pretty large and tell one of us to put it out. By the time we were in late elementary school, we knew about smothering flames, which types to use what extinguisher (there were no ABC types when I was a kid)... and now that I am in my fifties living on a homestead with my brother, his family, my mom (dad passed a couple years back), fire is the number one threat to our property. We have two fire extinguishers and a fire blanket in each of the rooms in the house - not just bedrooms, all over the house. Smoke and CO alarms, the works. The community of homesteaders on this mountain have a volunteer fire department and our family contributes the heavy equipment (earth movers/backhoes mostly), but have reservoirs of rain water at the higher points on the property, about 500 feet in elevation above the houses, that we have a firefighting hose system and pump hooked to.
Dad may be gone, but his family still remembers how to not panic and respond accordingly. His education he gave us for a lifetime is still being passed down along with the story of great grandpa's house burning down on Christmas Eve, so never play with fire... without adult supervision.

[mrtommygunwhite]

"Good news your repair is free"

"Awesome where is my car?"

"Yeah about that"

[Aidan.Sheahan]

Unfortunately a similar accident like this killed my buddy. Drained fuel, spark flew from a wrench hitting the exhaust, blew up the fuel and killed him. This guy is lucky to be alive and I’m glad he and his buddy weren’t severely hurt

[Killer_Turnip]

Props to the young guy for making sure the rest of the canister stayed away from the flames when it first went up.

[brianhawthorne]

I still remember having to put out my first fuel fires in FF1 training. But even our sadistic training officer never thought of giving us a dripping fuel line fire above it at the same time!

[Ichibuns]

I used to work in a manufacturing plant that made paints. We were surrounded by pigments, heavy metal dusts, and tens of thousands of gallons of various solvents and poisonous chemicals. The plant had been rated at an eight mile blast radius and sits on the edge of a heavily populated town. Safe to say the people of that town have no idea of its existence or dangers. Static discharge is a fear among all of the employees and several precautions are taken to eliminate the possibility. You can imagine the uproar when there was a small fire and management refused to set the fire alarm or call emergency services because they didn't want to deal with publicity. We found out shortly after that the foam system didn't even function. Corporations suck. A fortune 500 company, at that. The fire these mechanics dealt with was a particularly difficult fire and I give that one guy props for knowing exactly where to find the extinguisher to have at least a bit of control.