Fighting Galley Fires
Jim Murrant, author of The Boating Bible Manual of Seamanship, includes an excellent video of what happens when you use various different means to fight an oil or fat fire in a pan on a galley stove. Just about everybody knows that you should not use water, but this video shows how much better it is to use a fire blanket to smother the pan than to use a powder fire extinguisher.
The problem is that fire extinguishers send out a powerful jet. Although the video shows the fire extinguisher killing the fire instantly, it also shows chunks of the pan’s contents being blown all over the galley.
Whatever port in the storm. A fire blanket has many good applications and so does the fire extinguisher. It takes some trainig to know what to use when. Just like the training in this blog. Kay