Fire Extinguisher For Moving Vehicles

Recently i was involved in a committee that writes a standard specification for fire extinguishers meant for use in moving vehicles, such as cars, buses trucks, trains, boats and ships.

Interestingly, after many years our country has developed, with so many high rise buildings, so many cars on the road, and worse of all, so many casualties of fire involving road accidents, and we are talking about drafting a code of practice for this.  Well, this does not mean we do not have standards to follow before this, it simply means there were not enough specification to take care the conditions found in moving vehicles, such as vibration, sudden impact, extreme heat, corrosion and so forth.  When it comes to sea going vessels, the first thing cross my mind is the corrosive environment, which did not present in our normal conditions, where these extreme was not tested in extinguishers not meant for sea conditions.

To give you an idea how extinguisher (which not designed for corrosive environment) will look like, if it is exposed to winds of sea, photo below was on a ferry i took sometime ago.

This photo is just an example of how a piece of nicely chromed metal can be rusted, which may compromise the strength can cause failure.  I have seen worse ones.

It is commonly seen extinguishers mounted on trucks, especially oil tankers, normally 2 pieces of 9 kg Powder Type, mounted at the back of the prime mover, or, in this case, behind the tanker.

Unfortunately, in this case, they are chained, making it not easily accesible when in need.

I once received a complaint from somebody who claimed that his fire extinguisher leaked, when i took a look, what i saw was astonishing.  The extinguisher, i suspect, was kept in the car rear boot without a good mounting bracket, so it rolled back and forth whenever the car moves or stops, causing a rubbing action which rubbed away the paint and eaten away the metal, until a puncture developed on the body.

Oops, No Photo of this case, i hope you can imagine.

Back to the committee, i hope to see the government will publish a good guide line to be followed and the regulatory bodies put them into good practice to make fire safety more accesible to everyone.

A fire extinguisher installed in a vehicle is not only for it's own use, but also can be used to rescue other vehicle on fire.  It is not always possible for the vehicle on fire to retrieve it's own extinguisher for use, for such cases, other road users' extinguisher can be used, with the help of others.

If you are interested to obtain a copy of this standard, of course, when it is released, yuo can check the availability from Malaysian Standards Online, search for MS1539 Part 7.

If you like to comment on this Draft Standard, you can check the DMS For Public Comment Site