Page 105 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

BURNING GLOOP
It wasn’t until afterwards and I enquired about how he had fuelled the machine that the
source of the problem came to light. It was that water in the bottom of the stove that was
the real problem, as the burning liquid became shallower and closer to the water it was
floating on, the water began to boil!
The water took charge and began to throw large quantities of the already burning paraffin
and waste oil out of the air vents.
As I arrived, a wide stream of sticky, fiercely burning gloop was fast becoming a river and
approaching my number one lorry, the stove was now a bright cherry red all over and
untouchable.
The more the stove bounced and rocked, the more burning sticky gloop poured out onto
the floor, the glowing, all consuming river was spreading faster and faster.
The closed air vents made no difference whatever, ‘salamander’ had created its own living
burning world inside, very much like a modern diesel engine that begins to burn its own
engine oil from the sump, it is unstoppable!

Right next to where I stood were those recently acquired extinguishers and they were all
filled with dry powder, this was what they were built for but would they work?

I grabbed the first and duly set it off, Michael followed suit with another and the effect was
stunning. The powder immediately drowned the flames and within seconds all was quiet
once more. “Salamander” was
quiet too and slowly resuming a
more normal dirty metal colour.
(Picture of inside the maltings
some years later.)

The lorry was safe, although the
gloop fuelled flames had virtually
reached one of the front tyres
before we stopped it in its tracks.
But now everything was white!

Totally white, every corner, every
nook and cranny in the whole
6000 square foot building was
coated in white dust. Those large powder extinguishers hold an awfully large amount of
material and once they are started they keep going until they are quite empty.
We could really have managed with just the one extinguisher but how were we to know
how good they really were.
I had done all my fire fighting training while a Scout and Senior Scout but only ever let off a
water extinguisher, these powder ones were too expensive for training!
‘Salamander’ was 'put out' never to return, like most things involving a fire, the cleaning up
often takes longer than the physical action needed to fight the fire.

This lot certainly did!
So there you have it, we obtained the extinguishers because I was in the right place at the
right time. What a good result to end this long tarry diddle of a tale but all quite true!

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