Throwing water on an out of control Bunsen burner flame. Yes or no?

This is why P50 extinguishers should be standard. People panic in an emergency. I remember when my dad went through a water pipe he ran around trying to find some way to wrap it to stem the flow rather than just turn off the stopcock. People just cannot think straight in panic.

P50 is a single extinguisher for all fires. Replaces every other extinguisher (bar a fire blanket for chip pan fire). Doesn’t need servicing like normal ones. You just replace every 10 years. No idea why they are not standard.

They'd never be able to be sure it was you if you reported it anonymously. It could easily have been one of their employees.

If they ‘sacked’ your mother for this they’d be opening themselves up to escalating complaints and bad publicity - likeliest outcome is they will be extra careful and make sure nothing goes wrong around the pair of you in future.

hopefully they’ll reviewed their procedures and do some training so it won’t happen again and if it does they’ll know what to do and what not to do.

This reminded me of Moss in The IT Crowd writing letter to the fire brigade.

Any more thoughts on this, OP? I do urge you to report it to the HSE. If they've done everything they say they have done, then the visit will just reinforce to them the importance of fire safety and training. If they haven't, reporting them should mean that the do it, and it could prevent somebody from being hurt in a really nasty incident in the future.

I would report it to the relevant authority regardless. I am not sure they have the capacity to effectively learn from it given how many staff members didn't know what to do and the actions that they took.

"Couldn't produce a flame big enough to do damage" ... it's not like the tiny flame on a match can start a fire of any size, right? 😉

Yeah, they're shitting themselves.

With good reason to, to be honest.

"I feel the practice almost normalised this and tried to dismiss my concerns."

So you didn't report them, most likely.

I would contact the fire service and raise a business safety concern, for their lack of awareness alone.

Hope your mum's flame-grilled gnashers survived

The ones I mean are just a very small canister and the burner screws directly into the canister and so the valve is at the base of the Bunsen itself rather than there behind anything on the canister. There are actually quite commonly used in labs as having piped gas can be considered a hazard. You would still have to be very inept to set fire to the outside but if things get out of control it could make it more difficult to close the valve than on a gas tap system.

True that they might be using bottled gas, but surely that comes with a regulator device which has a lever that turns the gas on or off?

"basically the burners were certified safe to use and couldn't cause the building to catch fire."

FUCKING HELL that is some complete and utter bullshit if I ever heard it! That statement alone would have me certain that they were bullshitting you and trying to cover their arses.

It's a flame - a FIRE! Of course it very much has potential to set fire to the sodding building if applied incorrectly.

You can raise a concern with HSE, anonymously, about any business. You can tell them the exact nature of your concern, or ask them to do a general audit. I strongly recommend you do this, so that some adults can come in and make sure they've actually got safe working practices.

I was once unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of a fire in a commercial kitchen. I can confirm, that people are often utterly fucking stupid when face to face with an unintentional fire. Customers who could see flames coming out of the kitchen still trying to order a pint before they evacuated, staff hearing the fire alarm and coming to go into the room to gawk, and the piece de resistance a manager who tried to get me to put it out with water - it was a fat fire!

This is why emergency drills exist. We are supposed to do our training until it is second nature to do the right thing so that if god forbid a real emergency happens our primitive monkey brains don't immediately melt.

They are probably regular users of bunsen burners so I find it hard to believe that it didn't occur to anyone to just turn the gas tap off.

Turning the gas off would immediately limit the fuel available to burn to just that which was in the rubber hose connecting the burner to the tap, so unless any additional nearby materials had also caught fire then the flame would quickly die. Once it has then a window can be opened for a few minutes to ensure any residual gas has cleared. Job done.

They sound like a real load of faffers, to be honest.

Although the sensible option is to turn the gas off, were they actually using a Bunsen connected to a gas tap or was it one of the ones that screws into a small gas canister? If particularly unfortunate something flammable could have dripped onto the outside and the unexpected flame made it difficult to access the valve to switch off the gas. There should still be a clear procedure though of how to extinguish in case of unexpected/uncontrolled fire.

I’d hope at least one person in a dental surgery has a chemistry gcse. Just turn the gas supply off?

and get an AI overview of how this should work within a business.

Maybe not ....

If you are interested you can google :

health and safety policy and risk assessments

and get an AI overview of how this should work within a business.