Power outage causes flood of foam at airport

I told you not to put marshmallows in the microwave...

That will take a while to clean up.

:lolsign::lolsign: :lolsign::lolsign:

Interesting...I thought foam machines run on electricity, I guess its pneumatic...

Ouch. Someone had to say darn over that one.

Hmm, I think this set of pictures is related... http://cellar.org/iotd.php?threadid=10491

They should have rented it to the local college to have a rave.

Holy cow! Can a human breathe in that stuff?

PhotonWrangler said:

Holy cow! Can a human breathe in that stuff?

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I doubt it. The foam in the pictures is a part of a fire extinguishing system designed to snuff out flames by covering them in flame-retardant foam and cut off the flame's oxygen supply. Likewise, it would do the same for humans.

If you were caught in this with no way out, I'd guess you should wave your arms like a maniac in front of you in hopes of popping the bubbles and freeing up some air. Just a crazy wild guess.

"Clean up in aisle 12, clean up in aisle 12!!"

DUQ said:

"Clean up in aisle 12, clean up in aisle 12!!"

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...and 11... and 10... and 9....:laughing:

I hate to put a damper on this, but someone has to treat all that soapy water or else there will be a lot of dead fish somewhere. I just hope that the sewer treatment facility involved can handle it.

carrot said:

I doubt it. The foam in the pictures is a part of a fire extinguishing system designed to snuff out flames by covering them in flame-retardant foam and cut off the flame's oxygen supply. Likewise, it would do the same for humans.

If you were caught in this with no way out, I'd guess you should wave your arms like a maniac in front of you in hopes of popping the bubbles and freeing up some air. Just a crazy wild guess.

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From the link you posted:

[font=Arial,Helvetica]Also, if you're surrounded in AFFF foam, just swim your arms around infront of your face and you create an air pocket that you can breathe. Unless it's Baricade Foam, but that's a different story and not something they'd use in a location like this.[/font]

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-Bill

Thanks for pointing that out, Bill. Hopefully I'll never be in a situation where I need to use that knowledge!

I've gotta wonder whether it's normal for the foam to be released when the power goes out. Is there some obscure safety regulation that states that a power outage could be caused by a fire?

Whoa. I didn't even read the article, I just guessed...

I wonder what went wrong and why the foam system didn't auto-shutoff?

PhotonWrangler said:

Thanks for pointing that out, Bill. Hopefully I'll never be in a situation where I need to use that knowledge!

I've gotta wonder whether it's normal for the foam to be released when the power goes out. Is there some obscure safety regulation that states that a power outage could be caused by a fire?

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When you start designing electronics/computers to do Function A if Event B occurred, but will not do Function C if Part D breaks, or Electrical Mains E fail, or somebody with a down jacket (F) draws a spark against log printer G... while backup processor X is running on poorly maintained battery pack Y and, somehow, releases foam Z which Customer (pissed and confused) points to Marking Spec. that says Z won't happen unless there is a fire.

You find very quickly that it is very hard work to make sure that Murphy's law does not bite you in the butt in complex systems with multiple redundancies and backups...

-Bill

PS: From what I have read and seen, fire suppression systems (for Commercial Operations--not talking about the alarm in your home) are set to release their "Load" until A) it is empty and/or B) until somebody manually turns it off--which usually is not permitted until C) the fire department arrives to authorize shutdown--only by the fire department or authorized person D (usually the fire suppression maintenance company). If the janitor went and turned off the system because is was "obvious" that it was a "miss-fire" both he and the facility could be subject to fines and even shut down to public access. -BB

carrot said:

Whoa. I didn't even read the article, I just guessed...

I wonder what went wrong and why the foam system didn't auto-shutoff?

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And a related question - are they even supposed to shut off, or are they supposed to dump an entire load in the manner that a Halon system does?