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You are called to this call. We will see if anyone knows about equipment in big grocery stores.
You get a call for a burning smell in the bagel department at your local food store. The bakery manager tells you the smell is coming from the bagel oven. You see no smoke or nothing burning but can smell something hot. Where is the fire and how do find it and how do you handle the fire knowing this is a $75,000 oven?
This is where i got sent today to assist a city fire department with this call.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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Failure in the bottom of the oven, heat scorching the floor beneath the oven. Possibility of extension into the space below the store.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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What's the bagel over power source - electric, gas, or a solid-fueled oven? The source of the fire might depend on the oven power source.
The other option is that the fire isn't in the oven, but the smell is coming from somewhere else. I'd have some resources check for overloaded electrical equipment, overheated light ballasts, insulation fires, etc. around the store, in the basement, etc. Use TICs and/or Infrared Thermometers for places you can't see with the naked eye for this search.
If the oven is the source, the obvious choices are to cut off the breaker that feeds the oven if it's electric, cut off the gas if it's gas-fired, and to simply protect exposures and let the fire burn itself out if it's a solid-fuel oven.
Oh, and stop the bagel feed so that no more unintendo fuel source is added to the fire.
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In my experience (electric power, shut off) the stove had a failure in the bottom, heat had been 'leaking' out for about a week (intermittent notice of smoke odor). Floor below was dried, scorched and then finally started to smolder, igniting material below it (joists, flooring). Investigation of basement found smoke and flames in the ceiling in the area of the oven. Took a while to track down extension but no major damage other than to the immediate floor beneath the oven. (Rack fed oven, wheeled in and out, no auto-feed.)
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Permalink Reply by Derek J Sinesi on
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Oven is natural gas fired and yes is a 220v 3ph electrical system. The fire department in this case tried to use a thermo imagine camera that didn't do them much good because everything in the oven was around 500 degrees. They had shut off the power gas and electric and knew the fire was in oven bottom some place and also knew that the floor was a concrete slab no basement. They thought about just spraying the oven down with water but someone realized that may not be a good idea. So they did the next best thing they had the store manager call the vendor that services the equipment to come out ASAP to find the source. They were pretty lucky because i was only 5 minutes away. When i arrived i was about dumb founded as they were. So i went out grabbed my gear removed the excess panel and went inside the oven. What i found was a huge pile of bagel crumbs and old seeds way in the back of the oven smoldering away. It wasn't giving off hardly any smoke and what it was giving off was going out the exhaust pipe. It was giving off a trouble smell and a lot of heat. So after every thing was cleaned out of the oven and i was sure nothing under the bottom panels was burning i was approached by the city's fire chief and asked if our company could come out and train them on the different type of commercial ovens that they may run into again in their city. And i said yes i would. But the reason i wrote this is before i stared working on commercial food and bakery equipment i would have never giving it a thought that we could have a fire in something this big and expensive and what could happen if we just took our water lines in and started spraying them down. In this case someone would have gotten hurt or killed if they spray water in this oven. The stones on the racks would most likely exploded from being cooled down to fast. This department realized they have a big problem when it comes to this type of equipment and is going to fix that. Just something to think about. I do have to laugh here i have been a FF for 11 years and this is the first time i have had to climb into a oven to put out a fire.
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TICs don't help you inside the oven, but they are terrific for checking exposures.
Rule 1 - if you don't know the fire location, don't spray water around. Find the fire first.
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You got it. This is a city department and one of there members is a nationally known speaker and a great firefighter and knew not to let them spray water.
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I'm not downplaying th source, but you don't have to be a member of a city department, you don't have to be nationally known, and you really don't have to be a great firefighter to know that.
All you need is to listen to one good instructor tell you that in recruit school, to take it seriously, and to never forget it.
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The questions here are does your department know what equipment is in your area? How to handle a emergence when something goes wrong with it? Fire or entrapment in it. Some of this equipment can not be cut apart with your jaws and most is heavy gauge stainless steel. Is it 220volt or 440volt or in some case's does it have multiple power supply's? How much oil is in it or how much magnesium is in it? Do we use water or dry chem. or let it burn out on its own? Do you have phone numbers on hand for service company's that know this equipment in side and out that could assist you? Just thinking out side the box here and giving some of you in bigger villages and cites something to think about.
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You are right just putting out the facts Ben.
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Good points, all. I was just pointing out that you don't need to be famous to do the job right. If that were the case, there would be a few very famous firefighters doing the work of thousands.
The other thing is that I've worked for two different VERY large food manufacturers that had huge band ovens, continuous-bake waffle ovens, hot dip tanks, peanut roasting ovens, etc.
We had our own conveyor belt rescue equipment, special shut-offs, specialized mechanics on site to handle any dissasembly required, our own electricians, our own machinery extrication personnel and tools, so yeah, I was cheating some. :-)
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Permalink Reply by Pararescue on
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Because of a fire like this in our first due box, we carry 3 Purple K extinguishers. But this is a great learning lesson and reminder of the multiple hazards this posses.
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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First off. Good brain teaser Derek.
When you de-energize and shut off the fuel source to the oven, the heating and fuel supply are removed. The crumbs or even a whole bagel will burn until the fuel source is gone. This is the cleanest way to extinguish a fire contained within the appliance. These units are designed for that kind of heat and therefore shutting it down is the best place to start. Especially when you are pretty sure it is inside the unit, without an exposure problem. Purple K or any kind of dry chemical extinguisher is going to create a larger headache for the store when they get shut down by the health department. Purple K, while be it a dry chemical, is ultimately best suited for flammable liquid fires (note the BC rating) that might also have AFFF used as a vapor suppressant, for instance with a 3-D running fuel fire. That would not be my fire extinguisher of choice to take into a bakery (note the lack of class A rating)
Firefighters are not expected to understand every appliance in the world, but they should be able to look at the incident, identify the hazards, and choose a responsible strategy / tactic.
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