17 comments

  1. Fuel air explosions are truly awesome.
    Do it yourself ones actively contribute to the Darwin awards.

  2. I can't say much as I did much the same thing at age 8 or 10. I was tasked with burning a large pile of leaves, brush and garden debris. Something I'd done many times before and a pretty routine chore for me. This time it was wet and didn't want to light so I went to the garage and retrieved a 5 gallon can of gasoline and emptied the entire thing onto the pile. Went back inside to get more matches and came back out and stood a few yards away thinking I'd toss the match on the pile from a safe distance. I remember striking the match and it leaving my hand. Next thing I know I'm some distance away on my back, my hair and eyebrows burnt and the pile of debris was scattered all over the back yard burning away.

    Even professionals make mistakes with gasoline. There's a video out there of a fire department doing a training burn on an abandoned house that they'd poured gasoline in the basement. The fireman tosses a flare and the house explodes.

  3. not the same thing, but it reminds me of burning an empty lettuce crate.
    Talk about burning brightly. We stuffed one in a living room fireplace when we were in college. pretty dumb. The roar was like a locomotive running through town. lucky it stayed in the fireplace.

  4. That's don't use gasoline to start fires. Accelerants are okay, but gasoline, or anything that vaporizes at the ambient temperature with heavier than air fumes, are not. Of course, something like lighter fluid or kerosene can be a similar problem if put on a dead fire with hot coals. Apply a match, get a flame front whipping through the air.

    Back in the day, this would never have happened like this. One of those guys pouring the gas would have been smoking so the ignition would have been earlier and the flame front smaller as the fumes would be less.

  5. Never use Gasoline.

    Diesel ( kerosene ) is fairly safe as an accelerant. And old motor oil works fairly well.

  6. Avtur is not your friend when it has been brewing on a field toilet (we called them go-carts in the SADF, the medics got the bright idea to use dirty Avtur the Air Force had used to wash chopper parts with as a fly inhibitor.)and you toss the match between your legs after lighting up a cigarette…

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