Our big news story of the day. I have some ideas what happened. Lots of truck fires nowadays.
Could be anything that started that, I like the traffic cones in front of it.
The news article sez a mechanical failure in the undercarridge of the truck may have started it. Story link ---> Truck fire closes southbound I-5 lanes in Seattle | king5.com
That's not a hot truck - the Seattle FD made sure of that !!! This is a Hot truck - HeavyEquipmentForums
Oxygen haulers cannot have ANY axle seal or grease seal leakage ANYWHERE on the machine, Oil presented to volume O2 will auto ignite. Was a bottle truck at a Gas distributor in Ft Scott KS when I was there, SEVERE heat summer, similar to current and truck out in open with full bottles. Suspicion was a Acetylene bottle with a weaker rupture plug failed, Acetylene at high volume discharge auto ignites, set fire to truck, second bottle goes off. We were in the shop and heard the first Rocket Launch, saw the smoke, then the CASCADE of bottles blowing out and launching, we all understood what would occur next and started under trucks or trailers in the shops. The first to return was a O2 bottle, thru the building like a Dart, rained bottles for forty five LONG Minutes. Then the FD arrived to combat the derelict truck in the burned out yard.
My hunch---Air disc brakes, wheel seal leaking, freeway traffic on/off the brakes gets those rotors real f@cking hot, or metal on metal.
In most every diesel truck fire with in the last some years, is good old over heated diesel particulate filter regen, dosing it up nice and hot. In my opinion all emergency vehicles with diesel engines and vehicles like this one should be exempt from all the emission crap on the engines. This fire and smoke made up for it. And who knows if it was just O2 looked like some flying acetylene bottles to me.
Regen has to hit something like 1600 degrees or will fail, that'll melt the soles of your boots!!
That's a fact--but the fire was said to have started as a mechanical failure of the undercarriage. Very few have roasted directly related to catalytic surprisingly. And that would have had a vertical stack, I haven't seen any trucks carrying those types of loads/ a box van only with a weed burner.
And when can we believe what the news says? They have no idea what the cause was, (no technicians performed an inspection in that amount of time while it was burning) and besides DPF's are part of the mechanical and is under the truck. Gosh when the news talks about an excavator being a bulldozer, why would be believe they are now truck systems experts? You say very few from CAT? No DPF and do the study tons of California stories of that being the main cause of fires. I studied it a few years ago. And yes sure it also could have been because of something else, it would be nice to hear the real truth of the cause. But that T word is in very short supply like everything else these days.
Oh your right absolutely I just don't know ****! Why a feller just can't believe a damn thing in the news these days why everything is a conspiracy.
I don't know how many CAT's I have seen that started tires in the trailer brakes, but it has been a whole lot of them. Burned those trailers to the ground, they did.
One of the towing shows in Canada had an aluminum trailer destroyed by the brakes getting too hot/poor maintainence and the wood deck caught on fire. See rubber streaks on the highway fairly often from brakes locking up too. It had to be something to cause oxygen lines to get ruptured. Don't think anything around the engine could do that. I bet a lot of the people reporting something like this would be saying the oxygen was burning. Have had that discussion a couple times with people who were adamant that oxygen is flammable. No but if it's around anything that is, then watch out. On a kind of similar note the welding company in Nisku that had some cylinders explode and 1 worker killed and 2 others seriously injured, was fined $300,000 for improper storage of cylinders. Should have been more considering a fatality and life changing injuries for the other 2. One man dead, 2 hurt in explosion at Nisku welding shop | CBC News Welding firm ordered to pay $300K after fatal explosion | Canadian Occupational Safety (thesafetymag.com)
I am agreeing with TS here. Saw the bane side of Truck Air Disc in fleet I worked with. On Vocational use equipment these heated horribly and caused seals failures. Should this truck have been equipped with the over rated brakes system it could have had seal cook off leading to leak and with any O2 leak a fire tough to put out.
I don't know any of Seattle's rules, forgive me if I'm wrong on this...But, This truck driver might have been on his way to Harborview hospital to deliver medical O2 , while en route to a second stop at Steirnoff metals to drop off acetyline .... What if this fire would've started while parked at the hospital loading dock ? The Seattle fire department is the best in the country, but why test your luck ? I notice how this was in a wide open space, yet they took a defensive rather than offensive position on this. Maybe the fire department should get the gas company to help them "practice" evacuating hospital patients. I want fewer regulations and less government BUT If I was the fire chief, I wouldn't allow vehicles with mixed gases at my hospitals or near my schools. A separate trip to hospitals without welding gases onboard, wouldn't inconvenience the gas company that much. I've seen a truck like that at my hospital loading dock once per week, swapping out empty O2 tanks for full ones, all the while with acetylene tanks mixed on the same truck. Would I be out of line, to bring this to the attention of my fire martial ?
mixed gas loads are everywhere, was not the gas fault if had mechanical failure.
I understand, the truck may have been the problem. I understand mixed loads are common and nothing wrong with them. My local fire marshal, forced the local propane company to move their business, because they had LARGE propane tanks one city block or 1200' from the hospital. I thought that was an overly extreme response to a hazard. But the hospital loading dock is directly below the ICU and it would be bad if a truck had a problem at the loading dock.
The truck absolutely and with no possible question was the problem. The gas itself is safe when properly handled, stored, and transported. Brake fires are very common. Medical Oxygen is generated a different facility than welding gas. Your scenario has no basis in reality. The welding supply truck will never have anything to do with the loading dock at Harborview. https://jhfoster.com/automation-blo...nce-between-medical-oxygen-industrial-oxygen/
Sorry, I'm going to disagree with you. I'm familiar with both liquid and gaseous O2...I know about the designation of medical , industrial and aviation O2. The O2 that I put in my medical helicopter was inspected by the FAA part 135, it was placarded right on the 250cu' or 300ft.cu. tank: "not for medical or aviation use". It was provided by a welding supply company to the hospitals. I breathed it above 10,000'. the patient always breathed it. Moisture content never killed a medical patient. I can't say where Harborview gets their O2 from, but I can tell you that there are plenty of hospitals that use welding O2.
They bring it to hospitals in bulk. They don't deliver it on a liftgate truck from a welding supply house.
For the liquid O2, I agree with you. Larger hospitals use both types of 02.. portable pony tanks and hard plumbed liquid o2. Smaller hospitals use gaseous delivered with a lift gate.
Medical and welding oxygen come from the exact same tank at the air seperation facility. The cylinders they put it in different is all. I toured an Air Liquide Air separation plant that supplied oxygen for a Shell Refinery and multiple other users, industrial and medical. They said the welders are more picky about the purity of oxygen than the medical customers. They have a meter that continuously monitors the purity and it's usually 99.997% pure. They also said the argon they produce pays to run the facility and everything else is profit. Argon is only about 2% of the atmosphere!
I was a Paramedic Supervisor and Fire Captain for 21 yrs. All 3 counties I worked for in that time, I would go get 300 cft O2 tanks from National Welders and carry several of them back to the station to have on hand to change out when needed on the ambulances, and would (off-duty) go get tanks out of the same rack at the store for my personal cutting torch.
Well I can top all those accounts/stories. Years ago a guy I worked with a guy named Wayne, would come to work and head for the cutting cart. After a night out {which was every night} boozing and a pack of Lucky Strikes he would take a good hit of Oxygen off the cutting torch. Good for the rest of the day he was.
Wayne was pretty smart, I used to do SAME thing as taught by a old welder!!
I used to do that with the oxygen mask on the airplane. I had no intention of going flying I'd turn on the bottle and sit there with the mask for a while. Very glad those hard drinking days are over!
I still imbibe just not like the mid 20 something I once was, and nowhere near to needing O2 anymore.
A truck being loaded with welding gas cylinders caught fire right next to the freeway in downtown Dallas, tx. several years ago. The whole supply warehouse went up in flames and the explosions kept the interstate shut down for several hours.
At our ages--actually getting closer all the time. Won't be long and we'll all be Blue Heads.
Set off by a welders torch.