Effective Fire Fighting Requires Reliable Basic Knowledge

Recently, fire outbreak has become very common in Uganda, what the epidemiologists would call endemic occurrence. This has been attributed to varieties of reasons including negligence (doing something that a reasonable person would not do or failing to do what a reasonable person would do), lack of knowledge of how to prevent fire outbreak in the presence of fire hazards, criminal actions etc. 

This article talks about some of the information you need to understand to effectively and efficiently prevent and control fire in any place where fire hazards exist. In most cases, fire hazards are present in our environment. Fire hazard is any substance that has a potential of causing fire for example petrol, paraffin/kerosene, haphazard electric wires, gas stoves, other combustible matters etc. These hazards are in continuous interaction with our physical, economic, social and chemical environments and we become increasingly vulnerable if the environment favors fire outbreak.

Effective and efficient fire prevention and control measures aim at modifying or maintaining environment to reduce vulnerability of man and his/her properties to fire emergency or disaster.  This is based on the knowledge of fire causation and prevention described below:

Fire triangle: the triangle consists of four major components essential for burning (exothermic chemical reaction) to occur. All fire extinguishers should be able to remove one or more components in order to prevent or control fire. These include: combustible material, favorable temperature, oxygen and exothermic reaction/combustion.   

The environment should be modified to prevention the four components from coming together for example when paraffin is closed to another material under combustion, it catches fire and burning continues. 

Classes of fire: There are different types of fire that one should have adequate knowledge on how to prevent and extinguish using different types of fire since each of them requires different fire extinguisher. This classification based on the substance burning as below:

Class A – Wood, paper, cloth, trash, plastics solid combustible materials that are not metals. (Class A fires generally leave an ash.). This class of fire can be effectively extinguished using water and carbon dioxide-based fire extinguisher. However, proper knowledge of operating fire extinguishers is paramount in fire fighting.

Class B – Flammable liquids: gasoline, oil, grease, acetone, any non-metal in a liquid state. This also includes flammable gases like biogas. (Class B-fires generally involve materials that Boil or Bubble.)  Here water is ineffective and can spread fire exponentially because most flammable liquids are less dense than water. Here, they float and move with water from one place to another, hence spreading fire in that direction. Carbon dioxide based extinguisher is effective here

Class C – Electrical: energized electrical equipment as long as it’s “plugged in,” (Class C fires generally deal with electrical Current.). Here before you use water or carbon dioxide gas-based extinguishers, the device or any connection to the electric source should be disconnected. Failure to do so will lead to electrocution by water as a conductor. After disconnection, the fire behaves like any other class.

Class D – Metals: potassium, sodium, aluminum, magnesium common in a laboratory setting or in an industry that uses these materials. It takes special extinguishing agents called Metal-X, foam to fight such a fire.

Author: Ivan Ongebo, Bsc. Environmental Scientist at Makerere University School of Public Health, Kampala. Contacts: Phone: +256753629876, Email: ongeboivan@gmail.com