FREAK BLAZES

Evening Star, Issue 20117, 6 March 1929, Page 7

FREAK BLAZES

FIRES THAT START THEMSELVES INNOCENT-LOOKING CAUSES AIR BUBBLE IN A WINDOW. Spontaneous combustion, as a cause of fires, is vaguely recognised by most of us, but few know under bow many and how simple conditions it may take place. It is easier to tell what will cause a fire than to say what will not (writes John E. Lodge, in 4 Popular Science Monthly,’ New York). An air bubble in a pane of glass, a pile of wet lime—even an innocent-looking heap of newspapers—may burn one’s house to the ground. Mr Lodges catalogue of the surprising ways in which fires may occur without being “started” is calculated to cause uneasiness. He writes; “ Late one evening not long ago an excited voice came over the telephone wire to the Wichita (Kansas) Eire Department. 4 I’ve been smelling smoke for an hour,’ said the caller, 4 but .1 can’t seem to trace where it’s coming from,' Hc ; gave the address of a Wichita hotel. “ Firemen found that the hotel office and a storeroom behind it were filled with the odour of scorching paint. Search led to a smoking cloth, saturated -with the unmistakable odour of furniture polish. So hot to the touch was the woodwork beneath it that in another moment it must surely have burst into flames. “Next morning the porter, "when told of his fault, was frankly incredulous. He didn't believe that a fire could start of its own accord. He would not he satisfied until ho had taken another cloth, saturated it with the same polish, and put it in a safe place to see what would happen. In exactly one’ hour and twenty minutes it was a mass of flames. 41 Freak blazes have occurred irorn such a wide variety of sources that it is something of a task to say what will not cause a fire. Sunlight will; so will dust. Steam pipes have been rare but actual offenders. Non-electric sparks from buzzing machinery—emery wheel sparks falling into inflammable material, for instance—and electric sparks from static electricity have produced a variety of queer fires equalled only by those that chemicals start. Liquefied glass and molten metal in factories have contributed their share. Bursting cylinders of compressed inflammable gas have started fires. “ P.erhaps the oddest of all involved a tombstone, a box of matches, and a. freight car. For shipping men had placed the granite block upright in a car. As the car passed over a switch the stone swayed and toppled. Pate decreed that it should alight upon a carton of parlour matches. Soon a merry blaze enveloped the car. “ Almost unbelievable, it seems, that a steam pipe could set fire to woodwork. Nevertheless, there are several well-authenticated cases of such blazes. If the air space required by law is omitted after months of baking the abutting wood becomes dried out and reduced to almost pure charcoal. Spontaneous combustion follows. 41 Even an air bubble in a glass window' pane can act as a miniature lens or burning glass, fire records show. Sunlight focused in that way on a celluloid corah or other inflammable article has

contributed several cases of fire to the records. And the ornamental liquidfilled containers in drug store windows have been known to cause fires by acting as burning glasses. “There have been many old chemical fires. In a women’s hosiery mill in Durham, North Carolina, they . were having trouble with their bleaching solution. The chemical—known as so* diuin peroxide—was kept in the dyehoirse, guarded from moisture, because if water struck it a minor explosion would follow. .. . “An expert carried a. small quantity to the mill stockroom, where ho proceeded to weigh out samples. _ Beads of perspiration appeared on his brow. . There was an ominous sputter as ono or two fell upon the chemical he was weighing. Then the box hurst into flame and exploded. A packing case caught fire. Eight hundred dollars’worth of hose had been ruined before the flames were subdued. “ When a river named Augusta, , Georgia, overflowed its banks sometime ago, it elected to inundate the base-, ment of a store that contained un-j slaked lime. Soon the lime was slak-q ing merrily, giving off enormous' quantities of heat'. The lire that followed burned down that building and several others. • ' ■ . j “ In a Now York warehouse not long ago, firemen turned streams of wafer, upon an insignificant blaze. The water, penetrating cases of magnesium pow-, der, decomposed. Streams of hydrogen 1 gas filled the elevator shaft and exploded, killing several men. “Fire experts are beginning to recognise a hitherto unsuspected_ hazard —what is' known' to , chemists as 4 catalysis,’ the ability of certain substances to promote chemical reactions,' in seemingly impossible circumstances.4 ‘ Filing cabinets were ' being baked, in great enamelling ovens in Rochester, New York. Benzol fumes from the enamel solvent filled the ovens. • One morning an attendant opened an oven' door, and the resulting blast threw; him bodily across the room. Experts advanced the novel theory that the steel in tho oven may have aided the chemical union of benzol vapour and air that produced the explosion.”When you scuff across the carpet,, on. a dear drv winter day, you may notice a faint spark fly from your finger-tip as’vou touch a metal fixture. That baby spark of 44 static electricity ” is the bane of firemen, Mr Lodge tells us. It can cause anything from a-gasoline filling station blaze to a dust explosion that will wreck an entire factory. - He goes on: — “ When the Massachusetts Stale police investigated automobile fifes at filling stations, they found that tho mere passage of gasoline through a filling hose - generates enough static electricity to ignite the car’s tank, under favourable circumstances. Amateur dry cleaning is one of the primary fire hazards in the home, due again to static. Swishing silks, furs, or leather in gasoline is an ideal way, to generate sparks. Any such work is best clone, if at all, out of doors. “In the flood that swept- through Vermont not so long ago, barns were inundated with water. Oddly enough, several strange fires that followed m the flood’s wake were traced to tho wetting of the hay. One farmer’s hayfilled barn near Middlesex, Vermont, caught lire two days after the flood had receded. Heat generated in tho wet bottom layers of the hay pile had produced hot draughts to the upper surface, and finally had ignited tho close-packed mass. 44 In great coal piles occur some or tho most troublesome cases of spontaneous combustion. In one case a discarded Christmas tree left on the coal pile of an Indiana public service■ company started a coal fire. A board fence started another, and wind-blown autumn leaves .a third. Most coal piles have ‘ hot spots ’ which are likely la mount rapidly to the burning -point unless discovered and the coal Spread out to cool. 44 To tho present list of queer fires the future may add still others. There are to-day fires ot more or less regular occurrence ’ whose cause is still' utter mystery. Within the last few.'months strange blazes have occurred in -Cuba, Indiana, and Louisiana sugar refineries. In each case, investigators found,' they started 1 in the centre of hags of granulated sugar. Since sugar alone has loiig been on the ‘innocent ■ list of.-■•sub-stances incapable of spontaneous teoihbustiou, the theory has been advanced —and subsequently denied—that the sugar bags had previously been;'Used fpr some such combustion-aiding material as saltpetre, ana not propbrly cleaned.; The real cause is still, unknown.”-