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imagineero
 
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cant tell you 100% for certain, but i believe its phosphor. I can tell
you for sure that it bruns at an extremely high temperature and that
there are a lot of accidents with flares that lead to boat fires,
especially the 'rocket type' flares. the handheld ones are also
occasionally dropped. When i was a volunteer in the new zealand
coastguard we had to rescue people on two occasions who had set fire to
their boats with flares.

Flares will burn through just about anything, including aluminium. I
was a spectator at a coastguard run 'do's and dont's of flare use' day
held in christchurch. The demonstration was very informative and
showed the use of rocket flares, handheld flares, smoke pots and all
the different mechanisms used by different manufacturers. at the end
everyone got to fire a few off to see what it was like. All the flares
used were well past their expiry dates, and had been donated. Some
were as far as 20 years past expiry but almost all worked. The real
danger is with most rocket flares they fall *upwind*, so if you do what
most people think is lgical and fire them safely a little down wind so
they wont come back on you they do actually come back on you (and
sometimes set your boat on fire). It is difficult or impossible to
pick up a rocket flare that has landed and water doesnt help.

One of the participants fired a rocket flare that landed inside the 6
metre aluminium coastguard first response jet boat and burned a neat 2"
hole right through! hate to think what they'd do to human flesh.....


Shaun