Fighting the Fire



www.ucalgary.ca

Yesterday, I had fire fighting training at my company. I signed up for this training since I am interested in learning about different emergancey responses of any kind from first aid, CPR and fire now. We learned virtually how to put down fires of all classes. There are 3 general classes of fire, A,B,C. I thought the following might be of interest to know!

Class A fires, is from the sources such as trash, paper, cloth, wood

Class B fires is from flammable liquid sources

Class C fires, is electrical fires

For class A, water distinguishers are used, but for class B and C, Co2 distinguishers are used.

The classes that a fire extinguisher can be used are written on the label of the fire extinguisher. For houses, fire extinguishers that can fight class A,B and C are recommended. Fire extinguishers are suppose to be inspected 6 years from the first purchase to be recharged and on the life time is only 12 years. The life time of Fire detectors for houses are only 10 years!!and nthe batteries need to be checked and changed every year when we change the clocks.

The important steps in using a fire ditinguishers are: PASS

P - pull the safety pin
A - aim at the base of the fire
S - squeeze the lever
S - sweep side to side at the base of the fire

The most interesting fact of yesterdays training was that fire extinguishers are only good for a short amount of time. Meaning that a 5 pound fire extinguisher can fight fire for 5 seconds. Meaning that a pound per second is the capacity of the fire extinguishers. Therefore it's a must that if you shoose to fight the fire yourself to have another person behind you with another fire extinguisher to back you up.