https://jalopnik.com/ford-f-150-supplier-fire-featured-explosion-that-threw-1826248302

??? A company that makes magnesium parts and a local FD that don't know enough to NOT fight a magnesium fire with water ?? Certainly a NO BRAINER ! Incredible !!
A magnesium fire alone is very dangerous and I've known that for many years since they first used magnesium in aircraft .
There are special techniques for fighting magnesium, titanium and vanadium fires .Go back to fire fighting school !

 

I worked at a magnesium plant making valve covers for Ford, cadi, Toyota, and Honda. and if we had a fire we were on our own the fire dept just stood by and watched.

 

all of our firetrucks still have at least 0ne 5 gallon pails of"purple K" fire retardent on them.
we have not had a magnesium fire in over 5 years, but you still have to be prepaired.
and the last fire we had was an old volkswagon with a magnesium block.

 

One place I've seen the FD just standing by is in NYC with manhole fires. The electric co will take care of it !

 

A body shop down the road burnt to the ground several years back. ....
A vw caused it.
The owners were not happy. Neither had insurance!

 

Been looking at websites about burning metals such as Mg, Ti, V. Lots of info , been there for years !!
The F series is Ford's bread and butter .Enough to get Ford to rent the huge Antonov plane to ship a large machine to England !! Heads should roll in that Mg plant !!

 

From the article, it indicates the fire suppression system (aka fires sprinklers in the building likely mandated by code enforcement) is what added water to the fire. Someone at the company should have known better and made sure they didn't allow standard fire sprinklers in that section of the building.

 

When I went through the USN Aviation Fire Fighting classes it was foam on JP and Purple K on the A/C Class D fires, especially the wheels which were almost exclusively magnesium. On the P3, if we had a fire in the engine or wheel wells, when I pulled the E-Handle and hit the HRD button, it was Bromotrifluoromethane mixture that was a Halon mixture and was a non reactive agent when used on Magnesium or other metal fires. They always told us that 1 spec of dust from this, if inhaled, would absorb every bit of oxygen in your lungs and kill you. The flight line extinguishers were Purple K.

One of our P3's had an engine fire warning as they parked on the ramp. A lineman ran into the wheel well before he was given clearance to do so and was not observed from inside the aircraft. When the F/E pulled the E-Handle and hit the HRD button, it killed the lineman by suffocation.

 

Yes serious business !
Though I was never in the service ,all this brings back a tour of the Bayonne NJ navy base where we saw and got the whole story of the old Benjamin Franklin. We were Cub Scouts and spent the day watching demonstrations , including a fire fighting . A long time ago but I still remember it clearly !

 

I remember the firefighting classes when they were telling us about the cow blood, protein based fire fighting foam. Said if we ever went down while at sea to be sure to throw a couple of 5 gallons cans of the stuff into the raft we were getting into as you could eat/drink it and add to the survival rations on the raft...Darned good thing the P3 had NO tail hook and was too big to land on a ship. Land bases don't sink, so it was never a consideration to worry about.

 

Interesting! I just learned something new.