In the recent issue of Men's Health magazine there is an article titled "Crash and Learn." The article, written by Michael Perry, a volunteer firefighter and EMT, describes 27 ways to keep disaster in check.
One item that stood out for me was that if you are involved in some sort of a car fire (car fires make up 20% of all fires), never remain directly in front of or in back of a burning vehicle, as shock-absorbing bumpers can overheat and explode with enough force to crush your legs.
Probably not likely it would happen, but a dangerous situation I was not aware of.

Also if your air bags didn't deploy stay away from them or tape it up. I saw firefighter flying across the sidewalk when sideair bag deployed late during extrication.

Matt

Disconnecting the battery before any attempt in a car accident may solve lots of problems.

Burak

Yes. First thing when on the scene is cutting the battery cable.

I added a pair of cable cutters a year ago to my "car kit" for this very purpose. Never tied it to the air bags though.
Good input.

As if we need one more thing to worry about, some of the brake parts on newer cars are made of a product that produces poison gas when it burns! So stay well upwind of a burning vehicle. I can't recall the name of the poison gas, but I do remember being briefed on this several years ago when I was still on duty with the CHP...

One other thing that they point out in the article is that if you pull over due to fire in your engine comapartment, pop the inside hood release to make it easier for the FF to put the fire out.
Personally, if my car catches on fire to that point, I want the thing to be a TOTAL insurance claim.

Oh, great. So now the smart thieves are going to cut my battery cables before stealing the air bags. <img src="images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

As if we didn't have enough to worry about (what with SARS, mad cow disease, terrorists hijacking airliners by strangling everyone on board, one at a time, with dental floss, etc.) <img src="images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Funny, we just had a call for a car fire tuesday night


1. Don't Breathe. There's lots of of toxic stuff, even deadly Phosgene gas if the air conditioning system is a freon-charged system. Get AWAY from the smoke unless you have an air pack on.

2. Don't approach without protective gear, esp. multiple eye protections. Tires, Shocks, Gas Lift Struts, and of course, the fuel tank all tend to go "Boom" when heated (as they did in this fire).

3. Don't assume that the ground all around the vehicle won't burst into flames instantly. There can be fuel all on the ground not ignited yet until some flaming plastic drips on the ground.

Just some typical stuff that we think about.

Some folks here who are also involved in public safety mentioned cutting the battery cable in their car. Here in Bucks and neighboring Montgomery county, we've had some bad experiences with car safety equipment. Read on.

First of all, if your car goes on fire, and you don't happen to have a Scott-Pack on with a fully-filled bottle, GET OUT OF THE CAR IMMEDIATELY. Don't mess with the hood release (an open hood will just give air to the fire and make it go FASTER) and don't go near a burning car - they go up in about 60 seconds, and they are dangerous.

Next, if you ARE an emergency worker, you should know that those new "Hybrid" electric vehicles have several batteries, and cutting the 12V battery cable does NOT de-energize the entire vehicle. In fact, there's a whole independent power system that runs into the hundres of volts at serious amperage. More than enough to kill you. These high voltage lines are sheathed in organge jackets, but it can be hard to tell if the car had burned.

Also:
From:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/998111.asp
500 VOLTS
       It’s not just safety devices that have emergency workers concerned. New fuel or engine technologies such as explosive propane gas tanks or powerful electric batteries also pose risks.
       A Montgomery County firefighter, for instance, noticed something strange recently when he approached a wrecked car. Though the engine was shut off, the injured driver kept her foot on the brake. It turned out the car was still running on silent electric power and could have surged forward, hitting rescuers or bystanders.
       The car was a Toyota Prius, a gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle that uses battery power at low speeds. “We had talked about it in training, and there it was,” said Lt. Monte Fitch, a rescue instructor with the Montgomery County fire department who took that report from one of his trainees.
       In addition to running silently, the battery in a hybrid packs enough voltage to kill a person — more than 500 volts in the 2004 Prius, compared with 12 volts in the standard car battery. In the Prius, the battery is in an unexpected spot, behind the rear seat.

One of the very few times in my life that I was actually on fire happened while trying to extinguish a car fire. I was using the haligan bar to pop the hood open when my newbie fellow firefighter suddenly turned the nozzle off. The resulting view from inside my SCBA and Astra suit was quite a spectacle as a small stream of burning liquid shot out of the engine compartment hit me in the stomach and started working its way up (Thank god for Nomex!). At that point, someone else grabbed the hose, put me out, and then extinguished the original fire. Luckily I wasn't hurt. When the guy who turned off the hose was asked why he did it, his reply was that he didn't want to get me wet! <img src="images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> <img src="images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

As other folks have already said. If your car catches fire just get out and get away. If I had been Joe Citizen trying to put out his own car I would have been in serious trouble.

Chris

Martin:

I am just curious since I've been out of firefighting for a few years. How do you address a hybrid vehicle after it has been extinguished in order to prevent a re-ignition? With a conventional car we (as everyone else) were taught to remove the battery or at least the cables as part of our salvage procedure. I'm not sure if I would want to attempt that with 500 volts and a high amperage.

Chris

Problem is we dont' have an Standard Operating Guideline as of yet for the Hybrids. We're also facing Nickle Metal Hydride batteries, which are as nasty as you can imagine. We're not sure WHAT we're going to do if we get one of these! I'd be concerned that at 500 volts and 200 amps, any cuts we get would basically result in an arc-fired blast furnace, unless there's some sort of current limiter, and even that you can't trust.

I'd be surprised that there aren't safety systems built in the hybrids like those in the HID lights to shut it down. Even so there are fuses and batteries are still quite heavy so the battery box(s) are quite sturdy built so in a worst case accident the battery box should still stay intact and a fuse will pop if a wire shorts somewhere. I was in a shop when another tech popped a fuse in a big UPS while changing batteries (he hooked them up backwards because the UPS maker decided to use red for - and balck for +). A 300A fuse blowing makes quite a loud pop and your mental reaction makes you feel like you have just been electrocuted even when you haven't.

>>he hooked them up backwards because the UPS maker decided to use red for - and balck for +

Must have been a retired accountant <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Back when I was a dumb private in the army, I hooked a generator up backwards for precisely that reason. It was obvious to me that everyone in the world used red for - and black for + ; why should a generator be any different? <img src="images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

I forgot I was dealing with engineers <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I confused a couple people to whom I gave jump starts to because I had to replace the 10year old rusty - battery cable in my truck and the replacement was red. So I would pop the hood and they would stare for a minute at the two red wires until I took the cables and hooked them up <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

In the AC world, black is hot, not ground. In the car world red is positive and hot. In the telecom world of -48VDC, what color code do you follow? You can use red for positive, black for negative, black will be hot and red ground. NO way to avoid confusing at least half the people all the time!

For the car, I have a set of safety jumpers that have a heavy connector in the middle and an LED on each connector. To use, the cables are pulled apart, each end clamped onto pos and neg, and when both LEDs light you know you have the correct polarity and it is relatively safe to connect the two cars by plugging the jumper cable back together. This also makes the last connection farther from either battery and any probable hydrogen buildup.

Do what some others do - for DC stuff - Black is always supposed to be "ground". In a lot of military stuff, +5v is red - Other voltages will have other colors, and I'll be darned if I can remember them 15 years later
You'll see Orange, Purple, Blue etc - each is a DIFFERENT voltage - ALL are referenced to that nice black wire

The nice thing about standards is there are so many <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

AC: Black = hot, white = neutral, green or bare usually ground, red usually for three way switches and such
DC: Black = ground, red = 12v unless its computers which then:
computers: black = ground, red = 5v, yellow = 12v, -5,-12,etc others
then network:
T568A : White/green,green/white,white/orange,blue/white,white/blue,orange/white,white/brown,brown/white
T568B : White/ornage,orange/white,white/green,blue/white,white/blue,green/white,white/brown,brown/white
then home phone: Tip = green, Red = green, line 2 black and yellow, line three blue and white
then business/telco 25 pair which I'm not going to bother to type out <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
EIA 561 rs232, etc standards, such fun <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />