[Jewelry making - Article 00019] - [Orchid] Exploding bottles.

[Hans Meevis]

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    Hi, Does anyone actually know of anyone that had a tank explode, had
    physical or property damage due to acetylene or propane tanks.  I had
    a small workshop of about 50 square metres in the Elephant Hills
    Hotel in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, last year. It was situated next
    to the maintenance section of the hotel. Oxygen cylinders and gas
    cylinders were allowed, it being workshop designated area and all.For
    seven years things went well then   During routine maintenance in the
    laundry section, one of the maintenance dudes arc- welded into a hot
    air- exhaust while the industial size tumble dryer was still
    running.The resultant sparks set the thatch of the hotel roof on
    fire. He did not notice, because the vent was around the corner, on
    the outside of the hotel.Everybody inside ignored the fire alarms,
    because the hotel maintainance was forever playing with them,-
    causing the fire to go unnoticed for a critically long time..Then the
    fire sprinkler system failed because there was no water in the
    holding tanks.That failure became redundant when the emergency
    electrical generator failed because the was no fuel in the tank to
    run the diesel power plant. When power fails in a large hotel, it
    becomes pitch dark inside.Panic then sets in. Then my workshop burnt
    down, and I was in Botswana at the time.  Halfway through the fire,
    after my workshop roof had collapsed,( the fire came from the outside
    ) my oxygen cylinder exploded. My staff said the resultant bang made
    every spectator, quote:  run like hell , unquote. It was standing
    next to a nine inch structuraly- reinforced wall, and it shattered
    that wall from top to bottom and side to side.. It blew the handles
    off the roller, the roller stand level with the ground, the locking
    bolts of my safe from lock to retracted.,effectively opening the
    safe. ( I know, because I cut the safe open with a angle grinder,
    when things had cooled down somewhat.) In effect, it pulverised the
    burning workshop into small little pieces and many thing were only
    recognizable after some time spent studying the torn remains. Various
    steel cupboards, like my mould cupboard and polishing section I never
    found, or could identify anything resembling them. Around the corner
    and across the passage, even the lift doors hung drunkendly from
    their cables,or hinges, or whatever they have. The oxygen bottle was
    spread out flat, like a pancake. I have it here at home, in Botswana-
    as a memento..  On top of the hotel roof, hotel maintainance had been
    working on the refrigeration system of the kitchen,and had been using
    a full size Oxy/Acetylene set there, (unrelated to the fire.) It was
    the acetylene bottle that was the most spectacular, ( apart from
    mine, that is).It blew up before the oxygen did, and standing next to
    it, sent the complete oxy cylinder through a six foot square Chilling
    Unit's radiator. Sticking out like an arrow at 90 degrees.  Cause and
    effect are permanent things in life. The acetylene bottle blew up,
    and flew 300 meters through the air in a high arc, hitting a car that
    the deputy manager had put there for saftey in a large open space..
    Exactly on the drivers- side door post point first. It went through
    the door and hit the steering wheel so hard that the car was
    undriveable and seriously bent out of shape.Luckily he was not in the
    car at the time for he would have been most grieviously injured.. I
    was respectful of gas bottles before, and I am even more so now, and
    in the same manner my respect for fire has also been 
    reinforced... Hans Meevis.

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