AIR-BUBBLE IN WINDOW CAN CAUSE BLAZE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6843, 22 February 1929, Page 4

AIR-BUBBLE IN WINDOW CAN CAUSE BLAZE

Fires That Start Themselves

Spontaneous combustion, as a cause of fires, is vaguely recognised by most of us, but few know under how 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 “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. Lodge's catalogue of the surprising ways in which lires 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, lire department. ‘l’ve been smelling smoke for an hour,’ said the caller, ‘but I can’t seem to trace where it's coming from.’ He gave the address of a Wichita hotel.

“Firemen found that the hotel office and a storeroom behind it were tilled 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 lire could start of its own accord. He would not be satisfied until he 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 moss of flames.

Freak Blazes. “Freak blazes have occurred from such a wide variety of sources that it is something of a task to say what will not caaso a fire. Sunlight will; so wiil 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 ciectrie , spark from static electricity have produced a variety of queer fires equalled only by those that chemicals start. Liquefied gias3 and molten metal in factories have contributed their share. Bursting cylinders of comprest, inflammable gas have started fires.

“Perhaps 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. Fate 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. '

Innocent Looking Causes. “Even an air bubble in a glass win-dow-pane can act as a miniature lens or burning-glass, fire records show, sunlight focussed in that way on a celluloid comb or other inflammable ■.rticlo has contributed several castis of .ire to the records. And the hrnamental liquid-filled containers in drug-store windows have been known to cause fires by acting as burning-glasses. “There have been many odd chemi-

cal fires. In a women’s hosiery mill in Durham, North Carolina, they were having trouble with their bleaching solution. The chemical—known as sodium peroxide —was kept in the dyelieusn, guarded from moisture, because if water struck it a minor explosion would follow.

"An expert carried a small quantity to the mill stock-room, where he proceeded to weigh out samples. Beads of perspiration appeared on his brow. There was an ominous splutter as one or two fell upon the chemical lie was weighing. Then the box burst 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 near Augusta, Georgia, overflowed its banks some time ago, it elected to inundate the basement of a store that contained unslaked lime. Soon the lime was slaking merrily, giving off enormous quantities of heat. The fire that followed burned down that building and several others. “In a New York warehouse not long ago, firemen turned streams of water upon an insignificant blaze. The water, penetrating cases of, magnesium powder, decomposed. Streams of hydrogen 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 ' catalysis, ’ the ability of certain substances to promote chemical reactions, in seemingly impossible circumstances. “Filing cabinets were being baked in great enamelilng ovens in Rochester, New York. Benzol fumes from the enamel solvent filled the ovens. 06e 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 the oven may have aided the chemical union of benzol vapour and air that produced the explosion."

Firemen’s Bane. When you scuff across the carpet, on a clear dry winter day, you may notice a faint spark fly from your finger-tip as you touch a metal fixture. That baby spark of “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 wiil wreck an entire factory. He goes on:—

“When the Massachusetts State police investigated automobile fires at filling stations, they found that the 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 i 3 best done, if at all, out of doors.

“In the flood that swept through Vermont not so long ago, barns wero inundated with water. Oddly enough, several strange fires that followed in the flood’s wake were traced to the wetting of the hay. One farmer’s hayfilled barn near Middlesex, Vermont, caught fire two days after the flood had receded. Heat generated in the wet bottom layers of the hay pile had produced hot draughts to the upper surface, and finally had ignited the close-packed mass.

Discarded Xmas Tree. “In great coal piles occur some of the 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 to mount rapidly to the burning point unless discovered and the coal spread out to cool.

“To : the present list of queer fires the future may add still others. There are to-day fires of 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 in the centre of bags of granulated sugar. Since sugar alone has long been on the ‘innocent’ list of substances incapable of spontaneous combustion, the theory has been advanced —and subsequently denied—that the sugar bags had previously been used for some such combustion-aiding material as saltpetre, and not properly cleaned. The real canso is still unknown.”