06/07/2005
Al-Ahram Newspaper 2005/JULY /06
Last week, the Tenth of Ramadan city witnessed – for the tenth time – a tremendous fire as a result of fire flaring up inside a factory for oil and butter, subsidiary to Irma Company for Oil Production. As a result, two workers were killed and about 34 had different injuries. The fire lasted for almost 22 hours and about 75 ambulances or more participated and more than one authority stepped in for the rescue…( Available in Arabic – German in PDF )
Dr. Nader Riad,Board Member of Union of Fire Extinguishers Makers at The Federation of German Industries, during an interview with him, discussed the cause of the fire flare-up in the factory which happened during the welding of one of the tanks. This means that there is a defect in the industrial safety system that took place due to the welding operation, particularly that the presence of any flammable liquid would result in vapors, which are more dangerous in flammability than the liquids themselves. Such kind of fat and oil fires were the main preoccupation of experts of fire safety in the United Sates and the European Union for many years. It was classified under the name of the „F“ fires. That is, the „fat“ fires, which is different from the traditional five kinds of fires A, B, C, D, E. Dr. Riade adds, according to the international accreditations, the extinguishing substance for this kind which is called F fire represents a mixture of liquid of which the most significant characteristic is that it does not vaporize in a temperature less than 250oc. Moreover, it has the ability to absorb temperature through contacting the source of flame.