Fire fighting has always been a challenging task and requires a great deal of expertise in order to control it. Although with the advancement in the technology we have a number of options available today to control the outbreak of fire however still when you hear a news of fire outburst, there are always casualties associated with it. Therefore one often wonders about the preventive measures which can be taken in order to successfully curb the menace of fire
When we are talking about fire fighting how can we forget about the fire extinguishers? Yes you are right these are cherry coloured cylinders which you often find hanging in the offices or at times even at our home. One of the main purposes of fire extinguisher is that whenever a fire breaks out it gives you a small margin of time before you can call for fire fighters. Fire extinguishers are especially made in order to control the fire and at times they can single handedly overcome the fire therefore in order to be assured that you are safe against fire you should always keep fire extinguishers at your workplace.
Talking about fire extinguishers and fire fighting there has been a wrong perception among many of us. Many of us often feel that one of the best ways to fight fire is the use of water as it can easily bring down the ignition temperature but this is where casualties often occur. People just out of mere negligence often use water as their first resort in order to overcome fire. And at times either these people die due to electrocution or by inhaling the poisonous gases discharged by fire. Now before we go any further let’s divide the fire based on the sources that cause it.
On the basis of the raw materials for fire it can be basically divided into 3 main categories.
- Normal Fire
- Chemical based Fire
- Electricity based fire
One of the most lethal fires to overcome is the one caused by electricity because it has a very high casualty rate and if not handled carefully it can lead to serious consequences.
Let’s now discuss how we can overcome each one of them and also how fire extinguisher can help us to fight with them. There are different categories of fire extinguishers available in the market based on the requirement in order to fight fire.
The types of materials which are mainly responsible for fire can be divided into 6 major classes
- Class A – Materials like papers, woods, plastic fall under this class.
- Class B – This category consists of the liquid fuels like paraffin, petrol, kerosene etc.
- Class C – This category consists of gases like propane, butane, methane which have the potential to cause fire.
- Class D – Metals can also be a contributing factor in causing fire, metals like aluminum, titanium comes under this category.
- Class E – Fires caused by electricity or related products fall under this category.
- Class F – Material like cooking oil, fats and other similar products fall under this category.
Based on the above categorization we have three types of fire-extinguishers
- Water Fire-extinguisher
- Foam based Fire-extinguisher
- Carbon dioxide based Fire-extinguisher
Foam and carbon dioxide based fire-extinguishers are mainly used in the cases where the cause of fire is related to the chemicals or electricity. One of the basic principles behind the working of fire-extinguishers is that they tend to bring down the ignition temperature which ultimately leads to cutting out the fire. Water is one of the primary resources of controlling the ignition temperature. However one of the disadvantages of using water is that in heavy fires or the cases where fire is caused by chemicals, water itself readily catalyzes the fire instead of cutting it out, while in the cases where electricity is the main culprit of fire it can lead to electrocution of persons using water for fighting fire. Therefore in these cases fire extinguisher can be of great help as with the help of jet spray of carbon dioxide or backing soda it is possible to even control the fires caused by chemicals or electricity.
Therefore secure yourself with the help of fire-extinguishers; make your workplace a safer place to work.
