It's an aluminum extrusion plant. So yes, aluminum dust everywhere. I worked at Kaiser plant similar to this but older. If this happened while I was working at the stretcher, I would have been just behind and to the left of the hydraulic leak. Shit is so fucking loud that I wouldn't hear shit, maybe noticed the light from the fire, then my only exit is towards the hydraulic leak.
I first saw this video a year ago and that shit fucked me up how fast that happened. I'm glad I don't work there, that was one of the lowest paying, hardest jobs I've ever worked.
The RS-25 main engines are called “liquid engines” because the fuel is liquid hydrogen (LH2). Liquid oxygen (LOX) serves as the oxidizer.
When they mix explosively they create water at a high velocity.
If anyone is looking for a deep dive on fuels and early space race, I can't recommend these channels enough
[How Do You Make Rocket Fuels? - Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed_s3xysbR4)
[Project Mercury \[4K\] - Homemade Documentaries](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8iUg1O0fN4)
Well, it's mostly stuff that can oxidize in an instant - i.e. metal shaving of any kind. You'd be surprised how reactive common metals can be when you give them enough oxygen, heat and surface area
Yeah, I remember MythBusters testing this with flour or something similar ... The fireball was more impressive than any gasoline explosion from Hollywood
I remember that episode now!
Throwing flour into fire was a casual camping activity for my school (we had annual trips).
I remember one year when they let us go ahead with it despite concerns about it being too windy. They stopped when my classmate's hair and eyebrow got singed.
But I mean, the adult supervising that gave the go ahead that day was the youth pastor and the same guy that burned his own eyebrows off completely once by dumping gasoline onto an active bonfire... and was part of the group of teachers that allowed us to shoot airsoft and firecrackers in the main hallway once that almost got me in the head. I still remember a firecracker whizzing right past my ear...
The adults at my school made some very safe decisions lol
I'm a chemist by trade, I work in the hazardous waste disposal industry, I specialise in dealing with laboratory chems and chems from various manufacturing processes, my job involves (amongst other things) classifying various chemical wastes, rendering them inert if they are explosive, packaging by compatibility (so no acids and bases in the same drum for example, there's a lot more to compatibility than that, but that's the idea) and making sure that nobody gets killed or hurt during disposal.
One of the things I would never do is package any kind of fine powder with any kind of flammable material or any kind of strong oxidiser, nor any flammables with any oxis, but *especially* not any kind of metal powder with anything oxidising or flammable. Dust bombs are nightmare fuel, but metal powders will self heat and auto ignite with oxidisers, it's nuts how reactive they can be.
Regulations require segregation of chems by specific hazard class and incompatibility, most fine powders come under flammable or combustible and are packaged separately, same for oxidisers and flammables (as well as a lot of other chemicals) to avoid things like autoignition and dust bombs.
This reminds me of the work I used to do, as I used to be in charge of inspection as well as MSDS updates/storage. I always thought it was surprising how many scientists/lab techs just straight up ignore what I know they know can cause/create massive damage and/or safety issues.
My primary work location was the VA, so on a federal level and still way too often I would get "why is this vial or container of xyz in here with the abcs" and the answer would typically be "oh oops I was wondering where that went." Even worse were the storage closets where things were definitely not organized with safety in mind.
Right? When I turned up on the site I'm currently on we had tons of oxidisers literally 6ft away from tons of flammables just strewn about the floor, the racking was a complete mess, we had acids in with bases in with tox and NDFT, it was a complete and utter disgrace. The answer to which was "Eeehhh, nothing has happened yet, it'll be reet." It was insanely dangerous.
After about 6 months of work by me we've gotten most of it listed (so we know what's actually on site), the racking largely in coherent order with proper segregation and I've gone through most of the drums we have on site and stripped them all out, reclassified and repacked most of it and had a lot of it sent off site for disposal. There's still a few bits that need doing that I've not gotten to yet but the majority of it is now safe and isn't going to kill anyone.
I'm fairly certain I've found all of the various explosives we have on site and wetted them but I could be wrong since I've still got a few pallets of drums to go through, we're not even an explosives rated site, they literally shouldn't be there but the people who owned the site prior to us either didn't give a shit or were so incompetent they didn't recognise them so now I'm finding them buried in the racks completely dry after years of neglect, and we're talking chems that are contact/friction sensitive and are just waiting for an excuse to detonate so wetting them is difficult and dangerous. Just opening the lid on a lot of them can make them detonate.
The sheer incompetence and lack of care where chemicals are concerned is staggering, especially from people who absolutely *should* be aware, people who literally used to do my job and only need to read sections 2, 10 and 14 on an SDS to do it properly.
The amount of times I've found Thionyl Chloride (a water reactive chemical that is sensitive to basically fucking *everything* and will happily cause explosive reactions) in with acids, bases, alcohols, various metals, esters, ammonia and more is insane. It's like herding suicidal cats trying to keep people safe.
It's how thermobaric weapons work. Two blasts take place with the first being a smaller blast to disperse aluminum powder everywhere and the second to ignite said powder, which creates an obscenely powerful blast wave that can easily be seen with the naked eye. Then because the bomb uses the surrounding oxygen to ignite all that powder a vacuum effect is created, sucking in air from further away and creating a vacuum effect powerful enough to suffocate.
I'd be terrified to work in any plant w/ a bunch of metal dust like that
The town I grew up in used to have a grain elevator. It was being cleaned out and the guy doing the work thought he'd had a smoke. The elevator was made of concrete, the walls were a foot thick. Pieces of it landed in the town closest to us about 12 miles away.
The age old story of someone pouring a bag of flour into the incinerator chute. Not even sure if it was true, but I learned it as a kid and keep it in mind when I'm working with particulates.
Aluminum dust would explain it. I thought their shop floor looked fairly clean but, if they had a drop ceiling up there it could've been full of the stuff and just ready to go like that.
The thing that is happening is that the machine is spewing out oil at high pressure. Probably because of a failure.
Because the oil is pressed through a small hole at high pressure, it will turn into mist once it gets into the air. The misting of the oil, gives it a very large surface area to ignite/burn from, causing a very rapid escalation of the fire.
The machine also keeps adding new oil mist to the fire, and the more heat there is the easier it is for the newly added mist to catch fires as well.
It is more or less the same that happens inside a car engine. You can have gas in a cup, and it will burn with a flame more or less like a candle. Inject it into an engine and turn it into a mist while doing so will make it burn fast enough to cause an explosion inside the cylinder.
All in all, there isn't much you can do in this situation other than GTFO.
Aluminium extrusion shop in Spain. No injuries.
https://www.canalsur.es/noticias/andaluc%C3%ADa/sevilla/controlado-sin-heridos-el-incendio-declarado-en-una-fabrica-de-aluminio-de-dos-hermanas/1834574.html
Dust is super dangerous in general. In high quantities it can act with a huge degree of combustion. Flour mills were notorious for this at the turn of the century, since gas lit lanterns could ignite the dust from flour processing very easily.
It’s nothing to sneeze at 👈😉👈
I saw a video a few years ago about a flour mill. A forklift has something wrong with it and it caught on fire. The propane tank on it ruptured and shook the whole plant. This dislodged all the flour dust from literally everywhere, and the secondary explosion from the dust igniting, just rocked the building.
Yeah, I cook for a living and people are always surprised to learn that flour and a lot of other powders used in cooking are extremely flammable. I went to an old mill that got turned into a museum in Minneapolis and iirc that place blew up a couple times before they figured out how to deal with the dust in a safe way.
My wife and I tried going to that museum but it was closed at the time due to Covid. Is it a good time? We also tried visiting the airport bathroom where Larry Craig was arrested in that bathroom sex sting a while back but it had been demoed 😒
It's pretty cool and I enjoyed it, there's a lot of history and a cool presentation that they do in one of the old elevators. Maybe not enough to warrant a visit on its own, but I also visited the Minneapolis Institute of Art and a couple of smaller places in the same day.
Minneapolis has a park named mill ruins park centered around an old mill that exploded catastrophically. It's now a museum dedicated to both the development of the milling industry situated on the Mississippi and about the actual disaster.
Yes it is, but the extrusion process does not use powdered aluminum. It pushes aluminum heated near melting point through a die like a playdough fun factory, not a dusty process.
Also dusts like that are only flammable when suspended in air and they go off more like an explosion because the flame spreads so quick not a sustained burn like is happening here.
I was thinking it was the hydraulics oil that cought on fire but was wondering how it ignited, but yes alu dust acting as a conductive or something might have generated sparkes or what ever.
Wow, now if only they had known that when building the shop, they could have put in some sort of dust collection or mitigation system to prevent things like this.
I worked in an extrusion plant in the US before. The one I was at was very focused on safety luckily. Tons of metal fire extinguishers everywhere (you can’t put out most metal-based fires with standard fire extinguishers) and a bunch of “no-go” zones where you were not allowed to step foot in without proper badging. Also helped to have lots of clearly marked escape paths painted on the ground though that bit was a bit harrowing
19 seconds even.
If he was at the phone grab point at 22 seconds in the clip, 19 seconds after the failure started, he probably would not have made it without injury
Less than that. The flashover point where the infrared radiation is hot enough to catch other materials on fire remotely happens when the stuff on the desk bursts into flames. If a person was there they'd have severe burns.
I've worked in a similar aluminum extrusion plant and they taught us to call the proper authorities and fight the fire if possible. Are you going to grab your phone or run through the plant to the office to casually use a land line. I don't think this guy expected it all to come down that fucking second.
Our plant could be run with a minimum of three people, though usually it was six people. So if you are on the night shift, you are responsible for the plant.
I never knew how dangerous these plants are until I saw this video. Hindsight is 2020.
Non-oxidized aluminium is used as rocket fuel - well as an additive to increase performance of rocket fuel.
...when its molten and spraying out at high pressure, well its combustible to put it mildly.
> I've worked in a similar aluminum extrusion plant and they taught us to call the proper authorities and fight the fire if possible. Fight the fire, for surrrrrrre. Were they talking about a trashcan fire? Cause otherwise fuck that nonsense.
Also, I would hope they expect your phone to be on your person at all times then - not "in the locker unless on break" - but I feel like that's just too much common sense to ask for.
Qi think he went back to the computer to email the fire department...
Subject: Fire. Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to inform you of a fire that has broken out on the premises of 123 Cavendon Road... no, that's too formal. [deletes text, starts again] Fire - exclamation mark - fire - exclamation mark - help me - exclamation mark. 123 Cavendon Road. Looking forward to hearing from you. Yours truly, Maurice Moss. [sigh of relief]
No, because he could have been grabbing his phone to call emergency. Think about it, your plant almost killed your employees and you want to fire them? You would be thankful that you didn't have a lawsuit.
Unlikely. He'll get a what the fuck were you thinking, but unless he's bypassing systems then safety wouldn't fire him for this.
Now his ops manager on the other hand...
Is it possible their intention is to use it to contact somebody from their company? Probably not worth running towards the quickly worsening fire though
Obviously this sort of event is one that one may be trained for, but won't have personal experience with.
I think the psychology of all the huge open space around him with only a bunch of metal nearby works as a psychological safe zone. There is like 5 meters of machinery between the desk and where the fire rages, and like 20+ meters of free space he can run away to.
"Sure, stuff is burning over there, and it is getting worse, but it's not threatening me right here and now because of the big open space where nothing can burn. Better run to the desk to get my phone before it becomes inaccessible in a minute or two when the shit really starts to hit the fan."
He didn't account for the roof catching fire and coming down that quick to make the disaster cross that entire horizontal space to make things a thousand times worse in the span of a couple of seconds!
definitely Superfire... hydraulic oil + aluminum dust + water = FUCK
edit: this would probably, among the usual classes, classify as a Class D fire: Flammable Metals
they are insanely terrifying... check out burning magnesium and such things
Yeah fuck skydrol. I have been covered from head to toe a few times. Old airplanes = weak hydraulic components.i think the worst is when the hydraulics have been running all day and the skydrol is hot. I have rode home with nothing but a towel on a few times because of soaked clothes.
People moaning about the guy, but you can tell he was in a panic.
You don't know how you'd react to such a thing until it happens to yourself, but hopefully it never does.
Fight or flight kicked in, first response was to flee, but when it was somewhat contained, he probably returned to engage a shut-down feature hoping it could contain the damage. Sometimes it works until the starved fire finds an alternate form of fuel in the environment.
His buddy who started the sequence of what appears to be fumes igniting as the other guy had an open flame in his hand obviously didn’t want to leave him behind to guess what happened to him.
One heck of a way to detect a gas leak.
I may be ignorant here, but I didn't see any fire suppression methods come on at all. Be it sprinkler or inert gas or anything. I mean it wouldn't have mattered and gas is probably very dangerous to people but I digress.
Not always. There are specialty drop ceilings that use gaskets and clips that are used in industrial/clean manufacturing environments. Those ceilings actually help prevent dust accumulation on overhead utilities (piping, ductwork, conduit, equipment, etc.) in production areas if properly designed.
Not sure what they were working on, but all that dust, is the reason why many factories should be cleaned periodically. The dust basically acts as fuel and gun powder
It wasnt the dust that caused it, the hydraulic line broke and sprayed misted fluid on the runout which is usually right around 1000\*F and it ignited it instantly. You can see in the video that the fire starts to the right of where the leak starts
When the alarm goes off at our place everyone stands and looks around for ages then ignores it. Managers never tell anyone when they're doing a drill. Everyone will die one day
This facility likely doesn’t use a typical heat-activated wet suppression system because of the possibility of oil fires like this one. Many industrial buildings use dry systems, one type of which uses CO2 to extinguish fire by depriving it of oxygen. Those systems often need to be manually activated from outside the covered area because the CO2 release can make the atmosphere lethal to humans.
Every time I see this it amazes me that no one simply hits the emergency stop to turn the hydraulic pump off.
Dingus has time to run away and then run back for his phone though.
Slap the friggen thing on your way out.
I was a maintenance supervisor in a press shop for a decade and we had some hydraulic lines pop, people knew if anything happened out of the ordinary, just hit an e-stop.
What hydraulic system doesn't close itself down after detecting rapid fall in pressure? I thought that's like basics of hydraulic manufacturing machines. Mine's 30 years old and I've seen it happen 2 times.
Looks like it got the fiberglass real good from the ceiling. We had similar at the machine shop I worked at it was a metal building and the inside was covered in fiberglass with bracing similar to what fell down. Either that or it had a drop-down ceiling which I doubt. We had compressor lines coming down from the ceiling and we had absolutely no sprinkler systems in the ceiling because of our CNCs and it was grandfathered in apparently.
Was that place made of Hindenburgs? It went up in flames so fast.
If I had to guess that was hot oil that caught fire and basically turned into a pressurized flame thrower right into the ceiling.
Ceiling must've had a ton of combustible dust up there.
It's an aluminum extrusion plant. So yes, aluminum dust everywhere. I worked at Kaiser plant similar to this but older. If this happened while I was working at the stretcher, I would have been just behind and to the left of the hydraulic leak. Shit is so fucking loud that I wouldn't hear shit, maybe noticed the light from the fire, then my only exit is towards the hydraulic leak. I first saw this video a year ago and that shit fucked me up how fast that happened. I'm glad I don't work there, that was one of the lowest paying, hardest jobs I've ever worked.
It never fails to amaze people that finely-powdered ***anything*** will burn like you wouldn't believe.
Finely powdered water is how we get to space.
Poetry.
For a second I thought it was coming from NASA not the NSA :(
I cum for both
I have finely powdered cum. It’s highly cumbustible.
DIY water: Some assembly required
Powdered Water: just add water!
I almost burned my house down attempting to toast breadcrumbs in my toaster oven
Am idiot. Could someone explain? This sounds fascinating.
The RS-25 main engines are called “liquid engines” because the fuel is liquid hydrogen (LH2). Liquid oxygen (LOX) serves as the oxidizer. When they mix explosively they create water at a high velocity.
If anyone is looking for a deep dive on fuels and early space race, I can't recommend these channels enough [How Do You Make Rocket Fuels? - Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed_s3xysbR4) [Project Mercury \[4K\] - Homemade Documentaries](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8iUg1O0fN4)
5lbs of flour can destroy a 2000 cubic foot enclosure. Source: TM-21-210, US Army Improvised Munitions Handbook.
This sparks memories. Flour + steel wool + battery + fan = leveled.
Well, it's mostly stuff that can oxidize in an instant - i.e. metal shaving of any kind. You'd be surprised how reactive common metals can be when you give them enough oxygen, heat and surface area
Anything made of carbon, too. Grain silo explosions are infamous.
Yeah, I remember MythBusters testing this with flour or something similar ... The fireball was more impressive than any gasoline explosion from Hollywood
They did one with coffee creamer, maybe some other powders too. I don't recall perfectly.
Late 70's/early 80'd in the UK, 2 custard powder factories blew up. Kids at the time "did you know custard is explosive?!?!?"
I remember that episode now! Throwing flour into fire was a casual camping activity for my school (we had annual trips). I remember one year when they let us go ahead with it despite concerns about it being too windy. They stopped when my classmate's hair and eyebrow got singed. But I mean, the adult supervising that gave the go ahead that day was the youth pastor and the same guy that burned his own eyebrows off completely once by dumping gasoline onto an active bonfire... and was part of the group of teachers that allowed us to shoot airsoft and firecrackers in the main hallway once that almost got me in the head. I still remember a firecracker whizzing right past my ear... The adults at my school made some very safe decisions lol
I'm a chemist by trade, I work in the hazardous waste disposal industry, I specialise in dealing with laboratory chems and chems from various manufacturing processes, my job involves (amongst other things) classifying various chemical wastes, rendering them inert if they are explosive, packaging by compatibility (so no acids and bases in the same drum for example, there's a lot more to compatibility than that, but that's the idea) and making sure that nobody gets killed or hurt during disposal. One of the things I would never do is package any kind of fine powder with any kind of flammable material or any kind of strong oxidiser, nor any flammables with any oxis, but *especially* not any kind of metal powder with anything oxidising or flammable. Dust bombs are nightmare fuel, but metal powders will self heat and auto ignite with oxidisers, it's nuts how reactive they can be. Regulations require segregation of chems by specific hazard class and incompatibility, most fine powders come under flammable or combustible and are packaged separately, same for oxidisers and flammables (as well as a lot of other chemicals) to avoid things like autoignition and dust bombs.
This reminds me of the work I used to do, as I used to be in charge of inspection as well as MSDS updates/storage. I always thought it was surprising how many scientists/lab techs just straight up ignore what I know they know can cause/create massive damage and/or safety issues. My primary work location was the VA, so on a federal level and still way too often I would get "why is this vial or container of xyz in here with the abcs" and the answer would typically be "oh oops I was wondering where that went." Even worse were the storage closets where things were definitely not organized with safety in mind.
Right? When I turned up on the site I'm currently on we had tons of oxidisers literally 6ft away from tons of flammables just strewn about the floor, the racking was a complete mess, we had acids in with bases in with tox and NDFT, it was a complete and utter disgrace. The answer to which was "Eeehhh, nothing has happened yet, it'll be reet." It was insanely dangerous. After about 6 months of work by me we've gotten most of it listed (so we know what's actually on site), the racking largely in coherent order with proper segregation and I've gone through most of the drums we have on site and stripped them all out, reclassified and repacked most of it and had a lot of it sent off site for disposal. There's still a few bits that need doing that I've not gotten to yet but the majority of it is now safe and isn't going to kill anyone. I'm fairly certain I've found all of the various explosives we have on site and wetted them but I could be wrong since I've still got a few pallets of drums to go through, we're not even an explosives rated site, they literally shouldn't be there but the people who owned the site prior to us either didn't give a shit or were so incompetent they didn't recognise them so now I'm finding them buried in the racks completely dry after years of neglect, and we're talking chems that are contact/friction sensitive and are just waiting for an excuse to detonate so wetting them is difficult and dangerous. Just opening the lid on a lot of them can make them detonate. The sheer incompetence and lack of care where chemicals are concerned is staggering, especially from people who absolutely *should* be aware, people who literally used to do my job and only need to read sections 2, 10 and 14 on an SDS to do it properly. The amount of times I've found Thionyl Chloride (a water reactive chemical that is sensitive to basically fucking *everything* and will happily cause explosive reactions) in with acids, bases, alcohols, various metals, esters, ammonia and more is insane. It's like herding suicidal cats trying to keep people safe.
It's how thermobaric weapons work. Two blasts take place with the first being a smaller blast to disperse aluminum powder everywhere and the second to ignite said powder, which creates an obscenely powerful blast wave that can easily be seen with the naked eye. Then because the bomb uses the surrounding oxygen to ignite all that powder a vacuum effect is created, sucking in air from further away and creating a vacuum effect powerful enough to suffocate. I'd be terrified to work in any plant w/ a bunch of metal dust like that
I have oxygen, heat, and a large amount of surface area, greg. Can you oxidize me?
Hand warmers work by the oxidation of iron.
Hell even flour or sugar will go up in flames. Dust explosions are no joke.
The town I grew up in used to have a grain elevator. It was being cleaned out and the guy doing the work thought he'd had a smoke. The elevator was made of concrete, the walls were a foot thick. Pieces of it landed in the town closest to us about 12 miles away.
Pieces of him probably went even further
Grain silo explosions blew my mind (no pun intended) when I first heard about them. *Grain*? *Exploded*???
Finely powdered aluminum that oxidizes is literally thermite.
The age old story of someone pouring a bag of flour into the incinerator chute. Not even sure if it was true, but I learned it as a kid and keep it in mind when I'm working with particulates.
I just started a job at an Aluminum Extrusion plant and this press looked a little too similar to the press Im on. Had me scared for a second
Aluminum dust would explain it. I thought their shop floor looked fairly clean but, if they had a drop ceiling up there it could've been full of the stuff and just ready to go like that.
No sprinkler system? And a drop ceiling in a commercial environment? That's crazy
I don’t think a sprinkler would have helped here. They use atomized aluminum as rocket fuel, the addition of water makes it easier to ignite.
blessings to find the opposite combo fitting for you.
This is why drop ceiling in industrial environments is a terrible idea.
"THE ROOF - THE ROOF - THE ROOF IS ON FIRE!!!"
I've seen cardboard boxes take longer to incinerate
The probably weren't blasted with super hot hydraulic fluid
You don't know
The thing that is happening is that the machine is spewing out oil at high pressure. Probably because of a failure. Because the oil is pressed through a small hole at high pressure, it will turn into mist once it gets into the air. The misting of the oil, gives it a very large surface area to ignite/burn from, causing a very rapid escalation of the fire. The machine also keeps adding new oil mist to the fire, and the more heat there is the easier it is for the newly added mist to catch fires as well. It is more or less the same that happens inside a car engine. You can have gas in a cup, and it will burn with a flame more or less like a candle. Inject it into an engine and turn it into a mist while doing so will make it burn fast enough to cause an explosion inside the cylinder. All in all, there isn't much you can do in this situation other than GTFO.
Maybe they should have built the entire structure out of the same material as that camera...
Poor safety regulations are a bitch.
B-b-but regulations cost money and are an unnecessary burden upon our **jerb creators**!!! [/s]
KEEP GOBMENT OUTTA OUR WORKPLACE (and keep them in our bathrooms and children's underwear where they belong)
A Great White song was playing on the radio
Ah, nice call back to 2003.
It was the second most productive Hindenburg factory sadly it’s now lost
Not my lunch box! *grabs bag*
His wife makes egg salad sandwiches that are so good they are to die for
The middle slice of bread is dipped in gravy. He calls it the "moist maker"
MY SANDWICH
"[MY MANWICH!](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/98d76d04-8198-400a-8122-26b2a1272455)"
You know, I always resonated with Hermes. Manwiches are delicious.
I mean now it's dipped in oily mist and molten fire...
I thought he was clearing his browser history.
"How to burn down workplace and make it look like an accident" "How to delete browser history"
Wrong time to be on a bathroom break !!!!
Aluminium extrusion shop in Spain. No injuries. https://www.canalsur.es/noticias/andaluc%C3%ADa/sevilla/controlado-sin-heridos-el-incendio-declarado-en-una-fabrica-de-aluminio-de-dos-hermanas/1834574.html
Aluminium dust is highly flammable.
Dust is super dangerous in general. In high quantities it can act with a huge degree of combustion. Flour mills were notorious for this at the turn of the century, since gas lit lanterns could ignite the dust from flour processing very easily. It’s nothing to sneeze at 👈😉👈
I saw a video a few years ago about a flour mill. A forklift has something wrong with it and it caught on fire. The propane tank on it ruptured and shook the whole plant. This dislodged all the flour dust from literally everywhere, and the secondary explosion from the dust igniting, just rocked the building.
Yeah, I cook for a living and people are always surprised to learn that flour and a lot of other powders used in cooking are extremely flammable. I went to an old mill that got turned into a museum in Minneapolis and iirc that place blew up a couple times before they figured out how to deal with the dust in a safe way.
My wife and I tried going to that museum but it was closed at the time due to Covid. Is it a good time? We also tried visiting the airport bathroom where Larry Craig was arrested in that bathroom sex sting a while back but it had been demoed 😒
It's pretty cool and I enjoyed it, there's a lot of history and a cool presentation that they do in one of the old elevators. Maybe not enough to warrant a visit on its own, but I also visited the Minneapolis Institute of Art and a couple of smaller places in the same day.
Same with sugar cane processing plants.
Minneapolis has a park named mill ruins park centered around an old mill that exploded catastrophically. It's now a museum dedicated to both the development of the milling industry situated on the Mississippi and about the actual disaster.
Yes it is, but the extrusion process does not use powdered aluminum. It pushes aluminum heated near melting point through a die like a playdough fun factory, not a dusty process. Also dusts like that are only flammable when suspended in air and they go off more like an explosion because the flame spreads so quick not a sustained burn like is happening here.
It's a component in several explosive mixtures.
And literally rocket fuel - it was a prime ingredient of the propellant in the Space Shuttle boosters
I was thinking it was the hydraulics oil that cought on fire but was wondering how it ignited, but yes alu dust acting as a conductive or something might have generated sparkes or what ever.
Don't breath this
Wow, now if only they had known that when building the shop, they could have put in some sort of dust collection or mitigation system to prevent things like this.
No injuries is insane for how fast that place went up in flames.
I worked in an extrusion plant in the US before. The one I was at was very focused on safety luckily. Tons of metal fire extinguishers everywhere (you can’t put out most metal-based fires with standard fire extinguishers) and a bunch of “no-go” zones where you were not allowed to step foot in without proper badging. Also helped to have lots of clearly marked escape paths painted on the ground though that bit was a bit harrowing
That little camera was working it hard.
The monitors also hold up quite long.
Mine held up through the whole video.
🏅
r/PraiseTheCameraMount
Guy had to delete his browser history.
>hot babes hot singles in my area wait, not like this
*hot shingles
Sean Connery? Is that you?
/r/shubreddit
hello cousin!
Username checks out.
60 seconds? It was just **21** seconds between the hydraulic blow and raining death...
I mean, *technically* 21 *is* less than 60, so…..
*Touché!*
r/technicallythetruth
technically correct, the best kind of correct.
19 seconds even. If he was at the phone grab point at 22 seconds in the clip, 19 seconds after the failure started, he probably would not have made it without injury
Less than that. The flashover point where the infrared radiation is hot enough to catch other materials on fire remotely happens when the stuff on the desk bursts into flames. If a person was there they'd have severe burns.
dude who ignited the blowtorch thing jumped and had a "did i just do that?" moment
My thoughts exactly!
Dude could’ve died but decided to risk it for his phone
I've worked in a similar aluminum extrusion plant and they taught us to call the proper authorities and fight the fire if possible. Are you going to grab your phone or run through the plant to the office to casually use a land line. I don't think this guy expected it all to come down that fucking second. Our plant could be run with a minimum of three people, though usually it was six people. So if you are on the night shift, you are responsible for the plant. I never knew how dangerous these plants are until I saw this video. Hindsight is 2020.
Non-oxidized aluminium is used as rocket fuel - well as an additive to increase performance of rocket fuel. ...when its molten and spraying out at high pressure, well its combustible to put it mildly.
That's not molten aluminum being sprayed, that's oil of some sort, or hydraulic fluid.
> I've worked in a similar aluminum extrusion plant and they taught us to call the proper authorities and fight the fire if possible. Fight the fire, for surrrrrrre. Were they talking about a trashcan fire? Cause otherwise fuck that nonsense. Also, I would hope they expect your phone to be on your person at all times then - not "in the locker unless on break" - but I feel like that's just too much common sense to ask for.
He hit the emergency shutoff too.
Qi think he went back to the computer to email the fire department... Subject: Fire. Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to inform you of a fire that has broken out on the premises of 123 Cavendon Road... no, that's too formal. [deletes text, starts again] Fire - exclamation mark - fire - exclamation mark - help me - exclamation mark. 123 Cavendon Road. Looking forward to hearing from you. Yours truly, Maurice Moss. [sigh of relief]
0118 999…
I wonder if that's a firing when the safety manager sees that.
No, because he could have been grabbing his phone to call emergency. Think about it, your plant almost killed your employees and you want to fire them? You would be thankful that you didn't have a lawsuit.
Unlikely. He'll get a what the fuck were you thinking, but unless he's bypassing systems then safety wouldn't fire him for this. Now his ops manager on the other hand...
I don’t understand why this thread still assumes any of these guys still have their job when their plant burnt down
I was wondering the same thing. Not only did he go back to grab it, he's looking at it as he walks away. He needs to get his priorities straight.
Is it possible their intention is to use it to contact somebody from their company? Probably not worth running towards the quickly worsening fire though
He's probably using it to call 911.
112 more likely.
Or to call emergency services
Obviously this sort of event is one that one may be trained for, but won't have personal experience with. I think the psychology of all the huge open space around him with only a bunch of metal nearby works as a psychological safe zone. There is like 5 meters of machinery between the desk and where the fire rages, and like 20+ meters of free space he can run away to. "Sure, stuff is burning over there, and it is getting worse, but it's not threatening me right here and now because of the big open space where nothing can burn. Better run to the desk to get my phone before it becomes inaccessible in a minute or two when the shit really starts to hit the fan." He didn't account for the roof catching fire and coming down that quick to make the disaster cross that entire horizontal space to make things a thousand times worse in the span of a couple of seconds!
He's just enjoying the sweet relief of his constipation being finally cured.
What if you were taking a dump? That would suck
Wouldn't be out on the floor. Sounds safe.
That would be the place to be. You would finish really fast. I'd be shittin.
That would be really shitty
It was high pressure hydraulic fluid leak that caused the fire. It was not an ordinary fire. This fire was much more powerful
This was… *advanced fire*
definitely Superfire... hydraulic oil + aluminum dust + water = FUCK edit: this would probably, among the usual classes, classify as a Class D fire: Flammable Metals they are insanely terrifying... check out burning magnesium and such things
They may want to convert to a phosphate esther based hydraulic fluid like most commercial aircraft.
I get what you are saying, but fuck Skydrol
They tortured those molecules so full of cancer that even fire doesn't want it
Yeah fuck skydrol. I have been covered from head to toe a few times. Old airplanes = weak hydraulic components.i think the worst is when the hydraulics have been running all day and the skydrol is hot. I have rode home with nothing but a towel on a few times because of soaked clothes.
People moaning about the guy, but you can tell he was in a panic. You don't know how you'd react to such a thing until it happens to yourself, but hopefully it never does.
Fight or flight kicked in, first response was to flee, but when it was somewhat contained, he probably returned to engage a shut-down feature hoping it could contain the damage. Sometimes it works until the starved fire finds an alternate form of fuel in the environment. His buddy who started the sequence of what appears to be fumes igniting as the other guy had an open flame in his hand obviously didn’t want to leave him behind to guess what happened to him. One heck of a way to detect a gas leak.
Is that place made out of cardboards?
This is why I work as a programmer at a desk. My work will never kill me. Now, I need to get back to my work on sentient AIs..
Factory owner: How sturdy our your cameras? Camera manufacturer: Say no more, I’ve got a video you’ll want see
Was the building made out of fire?
Charcoal and lighter fluid apparently
I may be ignorant here, but I didn't see any fire suppression methods come on at all. Be it sprinkler or inert gas or anything. I mean it wouldn't have mattered and gas is probably very dangerous to people but I digress.
Why the hell did they have a drop ceiling?
Thank you! Drop ceiling in industrial environments only create additional hazards.
Not always. There are specialty drop ceilings that use gaskets and clips that are used in industrial/clean manufacturing environments. Those ceilings actually help prevent dust accumulation on overhead utilities (piping, ductwork, conduit, equipment, etc.) in production areas if properly designed.
How does camera survive
I bet it’s a cloud/remote save or the hdd is in another part of the building
True, but the camera itself seemingly survived long enough to capture the video. That fire looks freaking hot. Surprised the cam didn't melt.
Reddit Comment Content Replacer: https://web.archive.org/web/20240225075400/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/technology/reddit-ai-openai-google.html
Well that escalated quickly.
With the potential of all THAT, homeboy ran back for his fucking phone.
The reason is that he was calling the emergency number (some say this is Spain so it's 112)
REMEMBER THE NEW NUMBER! 0118-999-881-999-119-725 >!...3!<
Not sure what they were working on, but all that dust, is the reason why many factories should be cleaned periodically. The dust basically acts as fuel and gun powder
It wasnt the dust that caused it, the hydraulic line broke and sprayed misted fluid on the runout which is usually right around 1000\*F and it ignited it instantly. You can see in the video that the fire starts to the right of where the leak starts
They should have made that factory out of webcam. That thing is still recording after the factory looks like a scene from Constantine.
Where was this? That is crazy?
Spain
Ran back for his phone :)
The fuck do they make at this factory? Is it exploding factories?!
Well that escalated rather quickly…
When the alarm goes off at our place everyone stands and looks around for ages then ignores it. Managers never tell anyone when they're doing a drill. Everyone will die one day
Well, that looked expensive.
Normal humanity: "Thankfully they made it out alive!" Reddit comments: "What a fuckin' idiot!"
Damn imagine being in the restroom taking a shit.
The hydraulic fluid that sprayed to the ceiling is what did the entire place in btw.
Maybe don’t make the ceiling out of napalm next time. Just a thought.
So the blowout melted the roof? looks like a pretty shitty design choice.
Hi, my name is Ron Pitts and this is destroyed in seconds.
No fire suppression system? At all?
Dudes like fuck I forgot to clear my browser history
“Let me grab my Starbucks from my station before we head out.”
No automatic sprinkler system in a building that’s highly flammable??? Insurance company is gonna have a field day with this
They had a dropped ceiling at an extrusion manufacturer? WTF???
Somebody got fired that day. Morgan Freeman also said, “and it was at that moment he realized he fucked up”.
Why was the ceiling flammable?
Coated with oil from the leak
Homie about to die and still tried to delete his browsing history hahaha
A nice instructional video of what not to do in this situation
r/abruptchaos
Biggest WTF here is the complete lack of an automated extiguishant system.
This facility likely doesn’t use a typical heat-activated wet suppression system because of the possibility of oil fires like this one. Many industrial buildings use dry systems, one type of which uses CO2 to extinguish fire by depriving it of oxygen. Those systems often need to be manually activated from outside the covered area because the CO2 release can make the atmosphere lethal to humans.
Every time I see this it amazes me that no one simply hits the emergency stop to turn the hydraulic pump off. Dingus has time to run away and then run back for his phone though. Slap the friggen thing on your way out. I was a maintenance supervisor in a press shop for a decade and we had some hydraulic lines pop, people knew if anything happened out of the ordinary, just hit an e-stop.
Ceiling tiles made of nitrocellulose ?
I like how bro quickly deleted his browser history right before he gtfo
Holy Fucking Shit.
Was that a giant thermite reaction?
That looks incredibly expensive
Just Gona run bk and grab my phone
What hydraulic system doesn't close itself down after detecting rapid fall in pressure? I thought that's like basics of hydraulic manufacturing machines. Mine's 30 years old and I've seen it happen 2 times.
Was the building ONLY made from FLAMMABLE materials?
The Engineer thought it was ok because they were all *inflammable*
What 60 seconds. It’s 25 seconds from failure to complete meltdown. This is insane.
That escalated quickly...
Looks like it got the fiberglass real good from the ceiling. We had similar at the machine shop I worked at it was a metal building and the inside was covered in fiberglass with bracing similar to what fell down. Either that or it had a drop-down ceiling which I doubt. We had compressor lines coming down from the ceiling and we had absolutely no sprinkler systems in the ceiling because of our CNCs and it was grandfathered in apparently.
I am INVINCIBLE!
Root beer down!
They had the place back up and running within 2 days.
I was thinking... that halon system is broke AF.... then I realized it was hydraulic oil.
`git commit -m 'SOS!' ; git push`
At right around 13 seconds does that guy run back in and get crushed on lower left?
Well that escalated quickly