My Last day at the exhibition, here are some of the photos i taken:



This is how the dry powder portable fire extinguisher looks like when put in a transparent container.

This photo shows the internal construction of a Cartridge Operated Portable Fire Extinguisher, this is one of the most common design used in Germany

This is a portable manual hydraulic pressure pump, for testing any parts which requires confirmation on the strength of the parts against pressure. Parts normally tested are the container cylinder body, discharge hose, control valve, etc.

Any bikers here, how about something different for your head protection?
Oh no, this are fireman helmets.

More Photos of the Interchutz 2010 at Lepzig...

Steam powered fire engine

Fire Extinguishers can be very interesting...

Currently i am at the Interschutz 2010, the largest International Exhibition on Fire Prevention & Fire Fighting Industries.

Foam Monitor with Pressurized Foam Tank

A Malaysian Exhibitor doing preparation works

An antique extinguisher on display

A modern Cartridge operated type portable fire extinguisher on display

A military fire truck

A fire truck with pumping and hose equipment

An early fire car, i think it is a Fiat

Display on early portable fire extinguishers

A beauty with an early extinguisher

A remote control Monitor system, it moves like a robotic arm

Manual Water & Foam Monitors

An Ambulance truck

My Malaysian & Singaporean friends

A rescue superbike, with an extinguisher on it, can you see where it is located?

This is the main hof, where we hae our dinner, not many choices though, but the price is reasonable.

The training i mentioned in my last post was done on the 16 Jan 2010.  Instead of a few colleagues, it turned out to be more than 10 of them.  One of our subsidiary company staffs also joins in.  It is not the numbers that worried me, but it is the fact that some of them are experienced engineers.  I delivered the classroom part as per my earlier planning, but had to skip most of the slides considering the time limitation.
The practical part i asked one of my colleague to handle and it all went on well.

Most of the trainees had a chance to operate the fire extinguisher and tried to extinguish a small fire.
This photo shows a trainee trying to kill the fire.

Alow me to comment a bit on this photo.

First, look at his foot steps, he was standing with right foot forward, and he is holding the discharge nozzle with his right hand.  Usually, this is not the best way to approch a fire because it is harder to balance the weight of the extinguisher cylinder.  It also appears to me that he is not fully confident, therefore he reserve his left leg at the back, prepared to make a rereat in case of uncontrolled situation.

Now, look at how he hold the discharge hose.  He is holding it at the nozzle tip like holding a pencil.  This method usually results in a sharper angle of discharge on the fire base, as you can see, the angle is about 45 degree.  In this case, because the fuel is liquid, the powder discharge may splash the liquid fuel out of the tray and ended up on the grass, and the grass will start burning, and he will have to deal with more spots of fire.  And, that was exactly what happened, but i did not record it in photo.

So, what is the problem with aiming at that angle?
No, there is nothing wrong, as long as the fire is extinguished, peacefully and quickly.
In a small fire like this one, we cannot really see the difference because there is practically a lot more powder than required to kill the fire, but if the fire gets bigger and bigger, we will need to put every gram of powder into action, to extinguisher the fire, ..... otherwise, the fire will extinguish us.

In my next post, i will try to elaborate what it means and how to put the extinguishing agent to action.

Fire Extingusher Training

Early this week, i was requested to conduct a training to a few new colleagues who have just joined my company not long ago, on basic knowledge of fire extinguishers.  After some communications with this and that person, i got it arranged in the coming saturday.

It will be a 90 minutes session, of which the first 60 minutes will be a classroom lecture with a slide presentation and followed by 30 minutes of practical operating a portable fire extinguisher.

I spend some time getting the slides ready and got another colleague to prepare some extinguishers, petrol and a tray.  I have not delivered such training for some time, so need to flip back my old notes to recall the key words correctly.