Please ensure that your oxygen cylinder is properly secured
in the ems bag. When you check off the O2 cylinder, remove the cylinder from
the bag to a well vented area and check the pressure and then bleed off the
residual in this well vented area. Not inside the rig! Make sure that you are
using a proper none sparking device to turn the cylinder on (not a steel
adjustable wrench), make sure your o-ring is in place and finally, make sure
that penlights and other battery operated devices are properly stowed.
The crew of ladder 16 narrowly escape major injury and a
large fire that could have burned the rig up. After checking off the ems bag,
it was zipped back up and placed back in the compartment. The MRL bag was
placed on top. The FF then removed the suction bag and started to check it off
when fire emitted from the ems bag. The FF grabbed the bag and tossed in on the
bay floor where other FF's tried to extinguish it. The relief valve was
sounding and the impinging flame from the relief valve caused the cylinder to
fail. Notice the breech in the cylinder wall at the shoulder of the cylinder.
No one was injured in the fire or cylinder failure, but imagine the burn to the
face level of a FF when the cylinder failed if it was still in the compartment.
A preliminary investigation suggest that the ignition
sequence could have been a pen light (found melted to the underside of the
cylinder) and under the pen light was a adjustable wrench. The O2 somehow
leaked and saturated the bag. The ems bag was replaced back in the compartment
and MRL placed on top. The weight of the MRL compressed the cylinder on the
penlight against the wrench.
This information is still preliminary and was put together
with the help of BC Mike Gurley, BC Vance Cooper and John Lyons. We will
attempt to find the cause of the oxygen leak through a couple of channels
formally. As more information comes forward, we will certainly let you know.
It is amazing that these circumstances (Dominos) can come
together and cause such a terrible event---but no one was hurt this time
(except for noise exposure), and damage was confined to equipment. Please check
your ems gear and make sure pen lights are not floating in the bottom of the
bag and that your wrench is plastic or non-sparking and that you have the
regulator gasket/o-ring in place and you turn the O2 completely off.
Pressurized gases including oxygen and air are dangerous and you need to handle
them carefully.