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From: btysingr@pelham.med.unc.edu (Barbara R. Tysinger)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: oil well fires and shuttle tiles
Message-ID: <3027@beguine.UUCP>
Date: 20 Mar 91 17:10:10 GMT
References: <1991Mar14.151130.3822@welch.jhu.edu> <6093@bwdls58.bnr.ca>
Sender: usenet@beguine.UUCP
Reply-To: btysingr@uncmed.med.unc.edu (Barbara R. Tysinger)
Organization: UNC-CH School of Medicine
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In article <6093@bwdls58.bnr.ca> pdbain@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Peter Bain) writes:
>
>Nice idea, but it turns out that extinguishing an oil-well fire is
>easy: the people who do this for a living may extinguish a fire
>several times in one day.  The way they do it is (1) detonate some
>explosive (the old way) or (2) pump fire-extinguisher powder
>(basically baking soda) into the plume at the rate of several hundred
>pounds per SECOND (whoosh!).  They often re-light it intentionally to
>reduce the explosion hazard.

We should probably move this discussion to another group,
but before we do ....
There's a movie from the 1960's called _Hellfighters_ about a company that
goes around putting out oilwell fires. Granted it's about 30 years old,
(and drama too) but the basic technology probably hasn't changed that much,
and I think it may give the layman a pretty good idea of what will be involved
in putting out these fires.

.....................All opinions are entirely my own....................

Barbara R. Tysinger
Health Sciences Library
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
btysingr@med.unc.edu

.........."He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family........
.................was begat by lightning." -- Thomas Fuller...............