Good morning to you lovely reader (well, it’s morning for me, Sunday morning to be specific, but then you could be reading this at any time of the day or night, so maybe just ‘hello’ would be better.) So, hello lovely reader. Today’s bloggage is about that perennial favourite – the fire blanket. What do you know about them? What do they do? How do they work? And where can you get hold of one?
So, firstly – what do you know about them? Well, only you can answer this one, but for me I knew they were thing that I had seen hanging on the wall in kitchens, and that you put them over things that were on fire to put them out. Which is fairly accurate, but as always, there is a bit more to it than just that.
Next up – what do they do? Basically, they put fires out. Simples. To expand slightly for you, a fire
blanket is a fire safety device. It is designed to extinguish small fires, and it consists of a sheet of fire retardant material, which is placed over a fire in order to smother it. You can also use a fire blanket to wrap around a person whose clothing is on fire, and to tackle fires in waste paper bins and laboratories.
Historically, fire blankets have been reserved for use on chip pan fires. These fires are particularly nasty, because using water to try and put this sort of fire out is a very, very bad idea. What happens in this scenario is that the fire is greatly exacerbated, and results in an explosion. The oil in the chip pan gets so hot that it catches fire, if water is poured into the burning oil, it sinks to the bottom of the chip pan, as water is denser than oil. As it hits the bottom of the pan, it is heated above its boiling point, and instantly vaporizes. The water vapour expands very rapidly, and pushes a fireball of burning oil out of the chip pan and into the air – here, its surface area gets much bigger, and the fire gets even bigger. Basically, a giant plume of fire comes shooting out of the top of the chip pan, and burns down your kitchen. Bad times. Using a fire blanket doesn’t have any of these effects, as it is smothering the fire, and no water is involved.
Thirdly – how do they work? In order for a fire to burn, all three elements of the fire triangle must be present – these are heat, fuel and oxygen. If any of these three are taken away, the fire will not burn. A fire blanket works by cutting off the oxygen supply to the fire, by covering it. No oxygen, no fire. Easy peasy.
And finally, where can you get hold of one? Well, naturally, Fire Protection Online come to your rescue with their range of BSi Kitemarked fire blankets, which give you a cheekily large discount on your fire safety equipment. Safety and savings – what a tip top combination!
