Woman badly burned decanting petrol

[Blu]

here

Horrific.

It doesn't sound ilke a 'jerrycan' incident, but I hope there are no more like it over the coming weeks. Safer to stay put than store petrol or be pouring, syphoning or decanting it.

"Well she didn't know it was stupid."

really?

Sadly I've come across two or three people badly burned by petrol and in every case it's always been the fumes that have ignited. People don't realise that petrol fumes can ignite and neither did I until my friends got badly burned. I bet the poor woman didn't realise that her cooker being on the kitchen would have lit the petrol.

Flightty I'm sorry but that is just the worst kind of nanny state behaviour.

Surely anyone would realise that you don't pour petrol from one container to another in your home? Why else is it sold out of enclosed pumps and only into a car or a jerry can?

People have to take some responsibility for themselves, and it is easy enough to find things out these days with internet access.

Presumably not 2shoes. I mean she wouldn't have done it deliberately.

Bugsy, not everyone has a petrol mower or outboard or whatever. Most people don't, I'd have thought.

Yes dealing with petrol in a forecourt situation is common knowledge. But at home? Well how do you know what's safe - how far away from a heat source do you have to be? What if someone gets a call on their mobile nearby? You can't do that on a forecourt but how on earth do you replicate the safety systems in operation there, in your own house.

Do you see what I mean?

I actually do think most people would know it is stupid to muck about with petrol in the house. And why would you want to do it in the kitchen anyway? Poor woman! she has had a spectacularly bad "not thinking" moment and paid an extremely heavy price.

I think you will find that this is all in GCSE Chemistry. That it is the vapour that burns, not the liquid with petrol, and that petrol is very volatile.

It is taught. No one needs to be ignorant of this.

Alibaba I disagree. It's not something that would have been hard to do for the government, they distribute information all the time. They just didn't bother to this time.

It's a levelling activity. It's not nanny state. To assume that everyone who needs petrol, or wants petrol should I say is aware of the hazards associated with its use is to assume we have all had access to or used equipment which involves this activity. Plenty of people, especially men in manual work will know from experience what to do with it.

Many people will not have ever used that equipment, or had reason or means to. Mainly people who are better off will have come across the sort of thing mentioned (how many people on your average estate have an outboard motor boat fgs?) or those who have worked with chainsaws, large mowers, etc etc

The rest of us get to muddle through I suppose? Hmm. That's fair.

I didn't do GCSE chem. Most people older than me either didn't have to do science or have forgotten the useful bits.

My point is that the storage and use of petroleum IN the HOME is not common knowledge andtherefore it was naive and irresponsible to TELL people to do this.

flighty, if you are interested in mobile phones and petrol fumed, YouTube "brainiac static".

I feel very sorry for the women, but equally I feel she has been incredibly stupid. It's up there with sticking a finger in an open socket for stupidity, or flying your kite into an electricity pylon. But nevertheless so sad she had to experience this awful injury. I hope she survives.

Thanks

I wouldn't say interested so much as confused. Might have a look later.

Kites and pylons not good, then? Who knew?

Of course I wish this woman a speedy recovery but it was a daft thing to do. Even if you are unaware that petrol fumes burn surely some sort of alarm bell might ring when it comes to faffing with petrol in a kitchen while cooking.

I interpreted the govt advice as "fill up if you're passing and if you happen to have a jerrycan take it along as well." I did not hear "panic buy petrol & jerrycans."

With hindsight it prob wasn't the most intelligent thing to say but people have over reacted massively. If there is a strike & the govt had said nothing it would have been "where are the govt and what is the advice?"
It seems that people have become infantilised and just expect the state to direct them on everything.

I didn't do GCSE either but whatever chemistry I did learn covered the volatility of octane and the fact that it is the vapour that burns.

People are educated into the risks. It's not the govenment's fault that you didn't listen in school.

Cognito - I was talking specifically about the people - the gvt - who were telling us to stock up on petrol and the possible personal domestic circumstances they may have been thinking of. Though admittedly I do not know what Francis M's house is like I don't think many members of the ConDem gvt live in suburban semis with sheds. And I certainly do not think people who live in tower bocks are thick. What that I have said implies that? Do I think it is potentially dangerous to tell the population - many of whom live in tower blocks - to store petrol in cans? yes. Do I think it is potentially dangerous if many people are storing petrol in high density housing ? yes, I do. And it seems the Fire Brigade agree with me.

People do ill-advised things in all sorts of set ups. It has greater consequences in some though. My former neighbours lit a barbecue in a brazier thing on balcony - flames made the balcony above scorching hot, as well as the roof of the one below, some flames, loads of smoke...whole block evacuated. They just didn't think. (one of them was a teacher...)

I am surprised that more people don't know about fumes being flammable.

And poor woman - we don't know if she didn't know, or was distracted and pre-occupied - it was a terrible accident, anyway.

I did listen at school, but no one taught me that. Sorry. I'm clearly supposed to have osmosed that information from enough time sat on a petrol station forecourt while not smoking.

"they distribute information all the time"

Sadly no more. The COI (Central Office of Information), providers of the Tufty Club and many other safety messages and public information films, was claws this week.

Presumably it's all commissioned through ad agencies now instead.

Where are the public information films when you need them?

this was a horrible accident, and I hope the woman is as comfortable as possible.

but I am shocked by the people saying they did not know that petrol vapours ignite - why do you think there are so many warnings at petrol stations, re: turn off engine, mobile phone etc? and that is a place where petrol is decanted from secure tank storage into secure tank/can storage. but the risk of vapours igniting is still there.

agree with whoever said 'how do you think combustion engines work?'

Maude was wrong (and has since admitted so) to say what he did. but there has been such an outcry since he did say that, that I find it hard to believe anyone thought it was ok to store fuel indoors, let alone decant it in a kitchen, into an open jug, with the cooker on.

"claws"!!!!

"closed"

I think this was more a case of 'not thinking it through' rather than forgetting what you're taught in school. Like my ex BIL lighting up after syphoning petrol (we all jumped on him in time) of course he knew the fumes were flammable he just wasn't thinking, - none of us would have mocked him if he'd been badly burned though, that would be fucking out of order.

I thought engines worked by injecting a small amount of fuel into the chamber where it ignited. I didn't realise it had anything to do with fumes.

and tbh I did know fumes would ignote, but not the sort of distance you would have to be, or what exactly would cause it to happen in what sort of proximity.

I thought it might be fairly difficult to ignite them without doing it deliberately.

Fuck it, igNITE

sorry

I drank a sambuca once - the ones with a coffee bean on top that are lit - while it was still burning. Just didn't think.

But that is vapour burning, as is a flaming Xmas Pud.