Fire Extinguishers

Sometimes we forget the simplest things, or dont think of the dangers. It will never happen to me, seems to be the general rule. Blokes working under a tipper body without a prop. Never had one come down on me, been doing this for 35 years. But i use the safety prop, just in case. Had a classic example last friday. An old work mate was run over by the truck he was guiding in to reverse park. A slight distraction and its to late. He died in hospital from complications. RIP JIMMY...All workplaces where machinery is involved can be dangerous. Please be careful, And look out for fellow workers as well. Some may not see the danger that you can,,, Keep it safe

G'day all.

Just my 5 cents worth...

A full metal drum is a lot safer than an 'empty' one, because you usually know whats in it.

Somewhere around 1978 I was about 100 metres away at the other end of a building when a workshop fitter decided to do some arc welding on a trailer bracket.
He was in a Tyre fitting bay, next to a paint spraying bay.
He needed something temporary to use as a welding bench, and used an 'empty' thinners container he spotted in the paintshop.
But it contained fumes.
This resulted in the loss of his life, the paintshop and cans of paint in it, and about a 1/3 of the building.

I will never forget that day. It was Horrific.

After that incident the company crushed every empty drum .

Cheers
RS

I had a client just south of Bridgetown whose neighbour blew himself up while cutting a drum one afternoon in 2003. His house was a couple of kms away but they heard the boom and wondered what it was. Our sister brigade had to attend to help with the clean up. Not nice for all involved.

Do any drums have "do not cut" on them? Can't say I've noticed if they do or not.

Andy - I have never seen any warning along those lines .. and it's not so much, "do not cut" .. as "do not use heat or spark-inducing tools to cut" ..

I'm glad to see that my concern isn't just making me out to be a safety nazi. I take many risks, that I shouldn't, just the same as anyone else .. but I still have all my fingers, and have never suffered from a serious work-related accident .. bar one .. in 45 years of working with heavy machinery, equipment and vehicles.

The sole accident I had, which happened unbelievably easily, was wearing a chip of steel in the chest, whilst hammering a ripper tip off a Cat D6C.

I'd knocked out the retaining pin, and was belting the side of the tip to loosen it so I could replace it .. and the ball pein hammer I was using, chipped a chunk out of the edge of its face .. and it went straight to my chest like a bullet, went through my chest, cut an artery, bounced off a rib, and then lodged against the wall of my lung! ..

I can tell you, there's nothing like seeing your best red juice squirting all over the ground with every heartbeat, to make you concerned! Luckily, I was able to staunch the artery fairly quickly, and the brother was working right alongside me, and we rushed off to hospital at breakneck speed.
The problem that then developed, was the swelling associated with the injury, made my chest tighten up, and made me gasp for breath.
I was lying against the passenger door of the ute, gasping, and saying to the brother . ."can't you go any faster?" .. and remembering him saying . "I'm already sitting on 160 kliks!! .. "

Fortunately, the nearest hospital was only about 60kms away, and we got there in record time. The good lady doc gave me a good checkover, and because it was only a small country hospital, without an X-ray machine, they transferred me to a larger hospital about 140 kms away. They X-rayed me there, and the doc said I was the luckiest bloke around, as the steel chunk had missed all the vital parts, and despite being lodged against my lung wall, it was major surgery to remove it, and he was going to leave it there.
He talked about how scar tissue develops around foreign bodies and they can stay there for life, without threat. He was right, that was 1972, and it's never bothered me since.

However, I am always particularly careful about hammering, hammer quality, and the material I'm hammering on, nowadays. Always be aware that hammering on hardened steels with hardened face hammers is a recipe for disaster. Always use a soft drift or a soft face hammer in these circumstances.

OldAB - Strange that you should mention it .. but a number of years ago, old Joe only just survived being crushed when he was caught between a reversing truck and a loading dock. He suffered major chest crushing injuries that still plague him today.

Bloody hell you were lucky OT. We had a similar incident here recently but nowhere near as serious relatively speaking. Exactly the same scenario - old mate bashing the pin out to remove loader tooth. Problem was it didn't need bashing and he used a metal hammer to do it rather than the synthetic jobby that was lying next to it. Result was a shard of steel in his knee.

Re the drums - makes you wonder how many lives, after decades of people continuing to be injured/killed, could have been saved if a simple warning was plastered/pressed onto/into the drum. Having said that, most people know the danger any way and still do it so... :

Nothing wrong at all with being a safety nazi. We've had plenty of stories on here where members have had close shaves while restoring their old trucks ... and that's a hobby! Can't enjoy yourself if you or a helper/loved one come off second best.

That is lucky Ron, but it shows how quick and unpredictable accidents can happen. I sincerley hope you don't have to witness or clean up your mate's mess in the other shed if it all goes wrong, which is something else that people that do dodgy things don't think about. I wouldn't worry about being a safety nazi, I'm constantly getting up people about it, and it amazes me that they just don't get it a lot of the time.

Cutting lids out of fuel drums is what made Kurt Johansson of the Alice, NT, a quid, he picked them up after the war for nothing, cut the lids out and then sold them. Most of these drums were used for carrying petrol or kerosene and he lived to a ripe old age, eh.

He used compressed air blowing in the small bung hole and exiting from the larger bung hole, this reduced the petrol to air ratio, so NO BIG bangs at all. Quick and easy, no worries.

You can safely cut out as many as you want this way.

regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

Greenie - That's true to a certain extent, because petrol requires a fairly exact ratio of air to fuel to ignite, and blowing large volumes of air through the drum ensures that there's a very low ratio of fuel to air, thus preventing ignition.

However .. many drums contain unknown contents, depending on who's been doing what with them.
As a result, it's a bit of a lottery picking a drum and hoping that the "high air volume input" system works.
It's a lottery you stand a whole lot more chance of winning (or losing, I should say), than the weekly Lotto draw.

There could be any one of 200 or 300 solvents, chemicals, additives, or otherwise explosive compounds, that don't agree with the "high air volume input" scenario.
One scenario is, that you could have semi-solid deposits in a drum, that could produce a rapid abundance of explosive vapours upon heating .. and these vapours could increase the fuel-air ratio to a level capable of ignition and explosion.

I wager there's many little-known products that produce explosive vapours when heated. Just two of these products that produce explosive vapours, that I've come across, are antifreeze and windscreen washer fluid. I'll wager there's many more.

The other factor is the possibility of un-ignited acetylene filling a drum if there's a torch blowout, or even a poorly-set gas mixture that goes out and re-ignites.
The risk is just too high, and you'll find many safety warnings and discussions on the 'Net, that just tell you point-blank, to never use a gas-axe on a drum.

In these cases .. with unknown users .. unknown contents .. and unknown reactions, to the use of a gas axe .. the simple expedient of using an air chisel rather than a gas axe, is a whole lot safer.

Note the wording of the final paragraph (under "check list") in this following drum safety warning sheet.
The key words are .. "(IF) YOU ARE UNSURE OF WHAT HAS PREVIOUSLY BEEN STORED IN THE CONTAINER .. "

education.qld.gov.au/health/pdfs/healths...ool-safety-alert.pdf

Below, is a link to an absolutely superb, highly professional booklet .. produced by our "cuzzy bro's" .. that hands out precise information on the safe techniques of cleaning, then doing hot work, on tanks and drums.

It's called .. "HOT WORK ON DRUMS AND TANKS" .. and it's an invaluable, safe-working reference for working on any drum, or tank up to 2500 litres ..

www.osh.dol.govt.nz/order/catalogue/pdf/hotwork.pdf

i have found over the yrs that the racket that an air chisel makes opening up a 44 is far quieter than said 44 exploding after opening up with the oxy.

if u must weld a fuel tank, then the safest way is to fill it with water,

there is 1 chap who goes around the wheatbelt putting 2" valves into overhead diesel fuel tanks for quicker filling, b4 he welds the 2" male fitting on to the tank, it must be full of diesel

Speaking of explosions, we've had a bloke working for us on and off for about 7 years. When he first started, he was about 17, we've had him as an apprentice twice, and I think he only has 1 module to go to finish his time, not that he is working for us at the moment. He is also a native of the Shaky Isle's from accross the ditch. Anyway, probobly about 12 months after he started, we where at a different premises to where we are now, and I had a Donga for an office. I'd emptyed the bin in the office which was the standard large round plastic bin. About 20 minutes later I could here a bit of scratching going on, and I found a mouse in my bin, and the bugger couldn't get out. The young bloke strolls in, and I told him about the mouse, to which he replyed, "I've never seen a mouse" (They do have them in NZ don't they?), so I told him it was in the bin, and I was just going to take it out to the concrete, tip it upside down, and stand on the bugger. Someone else came in, and I went out to the shed. The young bloke decided he may as well kill the mouse for me, so he thought he'd freeze him to death, and picked up a can of that burn spray which cools your skin down, and started spraying on the mouse in the bin, while the mouse was running round and round. The stupp in burn spray is pretty much alcohol. All the mouse did was keep running around the bin. So the young bloke sees on the can, "Danger Highly Flammable", thinks no worries, gets a cigerette lighter out, sticks his head over the top of the bin, and lights it up. That was when we heard the bang. 3rd degree burns to the inside of his lip, no eyebrows etc, but no real damage, it did however kill the mouse.