Don't use lit charcoal to warm a diesel engine...!

[fkovalski]

From the article Heating up cold truck with fire: bad idea!:

Workers using an alternative heating method in abominably cold weather this morning sparked a fire at a mountain landfill.

The fire broke out about 9:40 a. m. at the Summit County landfill, just off of U. S. Highway 6 between Keystone and Dillon, said Steve Lipsher, a Lake Dillon Fire-Rescue spokesman.

Workers at the landfill put a pan with lit charcoal in it under a semi-tractor's oil pan, in an attempt to help heat the engine in minus 30 degree weather, and the tractor caught fire.

"This is one of those things that is directly related to the weather," Lipsher said. "They had a unique adaptation for handling it. "

No one was injured in the fire.

Two engines and seven firefighters raced to the dump to douse the fire. Two tractors, which are used to haul refuse around the landfill, were damaged.

"It was an accidental fire," Lipsher said. "They clearly didn't mean to torch the truck. "

It took firefighters about an hour to put out the fire and mop up.

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[Glen Pratt]

:-laf Deet-Dah-Deet. Unbelievable.

 

[rscurtis]

In a sense, they succeeded, they did heat the engine!

 

[Skydiver]

In 1982 I was driving home from working a night shift around 8am. I saw some older men that must have been trying to thaw a frozen radiator by building a fire on the ground in front of an old car. As I was finishing my breakfast & heading for the bed I heard the siren of a fire truck. I immediately knew where they were headed. This was about 2 hundred yards from my home. Tons of smoke.

 

[tempforce]

Einstein award winners they are... .

 

[MA2LA]

If i remember correctly in WW2 they used to burn pans of diesel burning under tanks to warm them up.

 

[Skydiver]

I believe it MA2LA.
My 88 y/o father in law (who thinks he's still 22 and in service) Retired Air Force "Fly Boy" often tells me stories of his service. He said to cool beer he would barely crack the fuel/water seperator on a B-17 and allow a very slow drip of av gas to splash on their beer. When the av gas evaporated it cooled the beer. That was in the desert near Saudi.

 

[FFL8N]

I hope they are just using the booster line to mop up and didn't pull it to put the fire out!!

 

[Ncostello]

FFL8N... that looks like a 1. 5" double jacket hose with a Task Force Tips nozzle. Or maybe an Akron Assult. What shocks me most is the lack of SCBA... in this day and age of nasty chemicals, plastics and who knows what burning in that mess. Maybe they don't have it... but we'd have that truck looking like it had 2 tons of high-ex foam all over it.



Anyhoo... one of my earliest memories of firefighting was to remove and dispose of a perfectly good booster reel setup from our rig. I had support from some... but caught much grief and anger about it. Too many people loved the convenience of a reel hose versus using a larger hose to hit it while you got the muscle up front. Booster lines do about 60gpm-90gpm under the best of circumstances... whereas we could flow about 270 from a 1-3/4 handline with the right nozzle. Big fires take booster line streams and turn them to steam while the fire continues to rage on.



I remember my grandpa telling me they'd put hot coals under their model-t's to heat the oil pans. If you didn't... you could forget starting them. Imagine what motor oil was like back in the 30's at -10F. Heck... he never even had new oil. He got all his used from a friend at a service station. Kept pouring it in he said and never changed it. Couldn't afford to.

 

[Wingate]

Seems like an oil heater would have been a better investment than the bag of charcoal. .

 

[PFlory]

Common sense ain't common.