Dusty Roach
As I was leaving my office that was downtown, and going to an adjacent building, I looked over by the smoking area outside, and there was a medium-sized fire! Being the safety professional I am, I assessed the situation. It appeared to be a fire in the plastic 5 gallon bucket used for cigarette butts. There was also paper and some trash in the bucket where someone had just recently dispersed a lit cigarette in said bucket. So, I quickly ascertained that we had had fuel, ignition, and oxygen, and subsequently a fire.
Well, I wasn’t going to call the fire department for such a small fire. Then the leaves by the fire caught on fire and the flames started growing. I ran back into the building to get a fire extinguisher only to find out that there was no accessible fire extinguisher in the hallways, and my office was up on the fourth floor. I went back outside and the fire was increasing in size. The bucket was almost melted down half way and was puddling up quite nicely.
Being the quick thinker I am, I decide to stomp the fire out. Normally that might be an okay idea (not); however, on the very first stomp, the melted portion of the plastic bucket stuck to the bottom of my boot. As I started doing the one-legged do-si-do dance trying to shake the burning inferno off my leg, flames started climbing up my pants leg. At this time I had visions of the news headlines reading, “Local Safety Manager engulfed in flames – News – tonight at 10.”
To compound the issue, on this normally less-traveled pedestrian walkway, there wasn’t a single person in sight. I did manage to finally kick the melting, flaming bucket off my foot with Ninja-esque moves. I quickly abandoned the “stomping the fire out” strategy. The whole time I managed to do all of this 3 Stooges act with a 44 oz. diet coke in my hand. The bucket remained on fire. My adrenalin at this time was pumping along at a rapid pace. So my next brilliant idea was to use my coke to extinguish the incipient fire. I did not know that diet coke on a plastic bucket that was on fire causes an accelerant reaction.
By this time the burning leaves were blowing across the alley towards the dumpster. My wits were coming around and I did manage to stomp the burning leaves out. I turned around and the melting bucket with a size 11 boot footprint was at a low flame. I went back into the building, to the men’s room, and filled my 44 oz cup with water and went back outside to extinguish the last of my mini bonfire. I turned around and there was a coworker looking at the small war zone who said, ” That ought to teach you not to smoke.”
One would think the story would end there…. No, oh no. Exhausted from the whole ordeal, I went to meet with the HR representative. I go into the office and sit down to discuss some very important business and another coworker asks, “Do you smell something burning?” I looked down and my right boot had a pretty white plastic coating. I divulged the sequence of events as I remembered them and quickly became the brunt of conversational fodder for the whole floor.
So, my friends, the next firefighting training that I conduct, I will not be in attendance. (I know that does not make sense, but from my viewpoint, it really does.) Paraprosdokian-esque.
The definition of an incipient stage of fire goes like this: a fire in its beginning stage that can be controlled with a portable fire extinguisher and/or small hose system. The definition should also read: do not attempt to snuff out plastic burning objects with boots or diet coke.
The point of this article is to illustrate that we all make mistakes or have errors in judgement. No one is perfect, not even the safety professionals. It was a learning experience, a humbling and embarrassing one at that. As long as we can laugh at ourselves and try harder to learn from our experiences, we will move forward in our efforts to be safe. – Dusty
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Dusty Roach is a safety professional based in Midland. He is also a public speaker on subjects of leadership and safety, and he maintains a personal website at dustyroach.com.