"dog" wrote

... look at the Titanic...
I did

--

Roger Long

Roger Long wrote:
"dog" wrote


... look at the Titanic...

I did


....and made it back!

prodigal1 wrote in news:122lvub6np3v389
@news.supernews.com:

but it's the paint that is actually burning yes?



The paint and the grease and the compartment contents....Steel doesn't
even melt until we get over 3000F, I think.

Wiring fires, where the thermoplastic insulation on the cables catches
fire and trails the fires from compartment to compartment through open
collars through bulkheads was the cause of a disasterous fire in the
Eastern Med many years ago. I was involved in a massive Navy program to
inspect the ships along the East Coast of the USA for electrical hazards,
as part of a "Tiger Team" that traveled from port to port. On one old
carrier, alone, we found over 32,000 problems that required immediate
attention.

One problem I vividly remember was in a big fan room that pumped air into
the main control room for the conventional oil-turbine propulsion
system...actually 8 of them on the carrier, the USS Saratoga. I was
inspecting the fan room and noticed someone had burned a hole in the deck
with a torch to route a temperature sensor tube into this fan room from
the deck below. The hole was open so you could see the "top of
something" but couldn't make out what it was because it was huge. The
hole was a violation. What I found MOST scary was what I was looking at
was the top of the #4 main propulsion BOILER! If the boiler had exploded
or caught fire in the compartment, the superheated fumes would have been
sucked through this big hole in the deck, sucked into the ventilation fan
which pulled a vacuum on this little fan room to suck air down an
airshaft from way up under the flight deck....AND BLEW IT INTO THE MAIN
CONTROL ROOM KILLING THE GUYS WHO WOULD HAVE HAD TO SHUT OFF THE BOILER!
Man, THAT report got their attention!

Anyway, on the carrier, we ran most suppliers on the SE coast clean out
of a product called TempSeal, which is a fireproof foam product that
hardens and expands in the collars the wires go through as it sets,
sealing up these big open collars the wireways penetrate the bulkheads
through so fire cannot follow along the wire insulation from compartment
to compartment, the cause of the major fire in the ship that started this
massive program. We must have used 1000 pounds of the stuff in 3 months.

Lots of stuff burns, very hot, in a steel ship that isn't petroleum in a
fire. The paint is the big fuel, layers and layers of it that built up
over the years....just to make it pretty.

Makes me think I should consider the unsinkable Etap seriously for our
next boat.

"RL" == Roger Long writes:

RL I've been to four lift raft inflation parties to give crews the
RL experience of inflating and climbing in before they were sent for
RL repacking.

RL I've only seen a liferaft inflate once.

RL --

RL Roger Long

--
C++: The power, elegance and simplicity of a hand grenade.

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:37:49 +0200, Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen wrote:

Makes me think I should consider the unsinkable Etap seriously for our
next boat.

If nothing else, the insulation could be worth it.

Matt O.

On 29 Mar 2006 10:59:03 -0600, Dave wrote:

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 07:18:16 -0500, Wayne.B
said:

make sure the raft is not tied to the boat

Bad advice.

Talk about lacking a sense of humor....

My concern is that someone could take it literally. There is a LOT of
misinformation floating around regarding liferafts and their
deployment.

I've been to four lift raft inflation parties to give crews the
experience of inflating and climbing in before they were sent for
repacking.

Liferaft rep in this region says that's a bad idea if the raft is going
to be returned to service; cylinder inflation stresses the raft
unnecessarily. Rafts are slowly inflated with compressors at repack
centers.

That being said, I've been to 5 inflation demonstrations; one didn't
work so well. It was a design that is plastic vacuum sealed in a
"baggie" in the valise with a breakaway shoestring type closure on the
valise; some "shoestrings" didn't break and the rep had to jump in
there with a knife before the raft tore itself up.

On 1 Apr 2006 22:37:12 -0800, "Mark" wrote:

I've been to 5 inflation demonstrations; one didn't
work so well. It was a design that is plastic vacuum sealed in a
"baggie" in the valise with a breakaway shoestring type closure on the
valise; some "shoestrings" didn't break and the rep had to jump in
there with a knife before the raft tore itself up.

My raft is packed that way. Do you know what kind it was?

"Mark" wrote

Liferaft rep in this region says that's a bad idea if the raft is
going
to be returned to service; cylinder inflation stresses the raft
unnecessarily. Rafts are slowly inflated with compressors at repack
centers.

These were all rafts from hard working commercial boats. They are
only allowed so many repacks and I think these were probably headed
for the great repacking center in the sky. That probably skewed the
results. Still, they were taken off in service and it was sobering.

One interesting lesson. A big, strong guy on a warm summer day tried
to inflate one by pulling out yards of painter (50 man raft). By the
time he got it all out and pulled hard enough to inflate it, he was
too exhausted to get himself into it.

--

Roger Long