4 Ways To Prevent Fire

10/4/2017 (Permalink)

Knowing fire's four essential elements can help you prevent fires.

You can prevent or stop a fire by denying the fire one of the four elements it needs.  Use the information here to protect yourself, your home, or your business from fires. Just eliminate heat, fuel, oxygen, or the chemical reaction. Here’s how.

1. Eliminate Heat
A fire cannot start without heat. Unfortunately, heat can build up and start a fire in many ways including contact with a flame, too much friction, or mechanical generation (like with your car’s spark plugs). Firefighter and author Scott Finazzo says heat gets transferred in one of three ways.
1. Direct contact: The heat source touches another object. A simple example is when a match touches a piece of paper.
2. Convection: the heat transfers from one location to the next by the movement of fluids. An example is how a hot stove burner transfers heat into a pot of water.
3. Radiation: Heat travels in an electromagnetic way like when you put your hands near a campfire.  

For more fire prevention ideas call (860) 649-0836.

2. Deny Fuel
All fires require a fuel--something that burns. Fuel for a fire can be wood, fabric, gasoline, ethanol, hydrogen, butane, or one of many, many other substances. Surprisingly, Scott Finazzo says most solids and liquids don’t actually burn. They are heated beyond their ignition temperature and start to give off combustible vapors (a process called pyrolysis). It’s the escaping vapors that burn.

3. Take Away Oxygen
The third element fire needs is oxygen. The air we breathe is about 21 percent oxygen. That’s enough to support combustion but oxygen itself does not burn. Air with a greater percentage of oxygen in it will burn more intensely. That’s why fire is particularly dangerous in environments rich in oxygen.  

4. Stop The Chemical Reaction
A chemical reaction occurs when the exact mixtures of a fire’s other three elements (heat, fuel, and oxygen) blend in the right concentration to promote ignition.

For more fire prevention ideas call (860) 649-0836.

Take away any of these four elements and you can prevent or stop a fire. Spraying water on most fires, for example, removes the heat and stops the fire.  Shutting off the value to the burner on your gas stove removes the fuel and the stove top fire stops. Putting a lid on a grease fire in a frying pan takes away the oxygen and stops the flames and prevents fire damage repair. For more information about fires, like the five major classes of fires, see Scott Finazzo’s book, The Neighborhood Emergency Response Handbook. Or call SERVPRO of Manchester/Mansfield (860.649.0836).

Help Is Here
The team at SERVPRO of Manchester/Mansfield has specialized training and experience in fire restoration services, natural disaster prevention, and natural disaster cleanup. Call SERVPRO of Manchester/Mansfield (860.649.0836) anytime, 24/7.

More Help From Other Blog Posts   
Every month SERVPRO of Manchester/Mansfield publishes educational blog posts on how eastern Connecticut businesses and residents can protect themselves from fire and other disasters. We want to educate you on how to deal with damage from mold, fire, water, sewage, storms, wind, and other natural causes. 

You might also want to explore the educational information on our sister franchise’s SERVPRO of Bloomfield/Enfield’s blog.

SERVPRO of Manchester/Mansfield
IICRC Certified
540 N. Main Street
Manchester, CT 06042
Call 860.649.0836
24 hour emergency service