funny story from WELDERS HANBOOK

dr sportster

Well-known Member
This accident occured in the driveway of a private residence near my house.The destruction was so great that the police and fire department blocked off three streets to preserve order while they surveyed the damage. A local oil-trucking company had hired two neighborhood weldors to weld taillight brackets on the rear bumper of some new trucks.The trucks were really fancy ,with fiberglass cabs,chrome plated stacks, and a large stainless-steel tank on the back for hauling crude oil.The tank was a two layer assembly with fiberglass insulation between the inner tank and the outer cover.The welding had been completed on one truck. The second truck was backed into the driveway so the weldor could get the welding cables to the rear bumper.The truck was so big that it occupied the entire driveway.The auto shop student had been watching but went home for lunch.He lived in a house one block from where the welding was being done. He heard a tremendous explosion and ran outside just in time to see a huge stainless-steel tank fall on top of the house behind his. At first he thought a missile from nearby Vanderberg AFB had exploded and was falling on the neighborhood.Then he realized the debris had come from where the trucks were being welded, so he ran down the street to find the new truck had been totally demolished .One of the weldors had been blown across the street, bruised but alive. The other fellow was found inside the kitchen of the house,also bruised but alive. The truck didn't fare as well.The oil tank ,of course had been blown off the frame,straight up 100 feet or more and had parked itself on the house roof . The cab was laying shattered in the next yard. The two chrome plated exhaust pipes had been flattened to the ground . The frame of the truck was warped and twisted . Pieces of the truck landed on cars and the rooftops of neaby houses. The new truck was totalled. Damage to the house was 50% . The two men welding on the truck escaped with minor injuries. Hello Prudential ? The explosion was caused by a welding spark igniting vapors escaping from the crude oil tank. The lesson to be learned from these accidents is that containers of flammable products should not be welded or cut with a torch. It is safest to refuse to weld on or near any such tank or container. Even vapors from non-flammable liquids can be explosive under certain conditions. And for sure vapors from flammable liquids are explosive. { From the beginning of Chapter 2 in WELDER'S HANDBOOK for the entertsinment of those who do not own the book. The book was mentioned in the welding post the other day]
 
story from my county paper: 2 men & a woman were standing on top of a 100 barrel oil storage tank with the tank lid open. Wanting to see how much oil was down inside, one suggested a cigarette lighter. Guy with lighter says "sure hope this doesn't blow up" & flicked his Bic. Ka-boom! Tank went up in the air 30 ft turning over twice. Threw the curious trio off on the first flip. All had minor injuries. Alcohol was involved.
 
One of the young cleanup guys at my Mopar shop was cutting the lid off an empty 55 gal drum with a torch. It was Non Flammable but he didn't remove the plugs. When the metal got hot enough to melt the top blew off and shot into the rafters, what fluid was still in there burst into flame for a few moments. Stripped half the guys clothes off and gave him a "sunburn" but amazingly no other injuries. It made a very cool double explosion, the classic KA..BOOM...
Would have been funny if it wasn't so stupid.
 
I'm on a volunteer fire dept in the area. Late one night the house rattled with what sounded like and explosion of some sort. In a very short time we were paged out to a "house exploding" with injuries. It was about five miles from my house so I knew it had to be pretty big. Turns out it was a small farmhouse that was one of those frame houses with stucco on the outside. The farmhand and his family thought they could smell gas (you know where this is going) and the guy was looking under the house and lit a match...

Four occupants, three bruised and cut up some, the fourth, the one with the match, two broken legs. All four outside walls were laying out, the floor was turned over, literally, and the roof was collapsed on the floor. It did not burn somehow, evidently the force of the explosion put out any fire. We found pieces of wood and debris a half mile away.
 
Fuel gage did not work on a semi truck. Driver wanted to know if he had enough fuel to get home so he pulled over, stuck his hand down in the tank and lit his lighter. Got his arm nicely burnt.
 
Probably a little exaggerated to warn people of the danger. I worked at a shop that built large oil field tanks. A couple guys in the paint shop were applying a coating to the inside of a tank. One guy was already in the tank and the second guy was just entering it when a static electricity spark set off an explosion in the tank. The tank rolled some and both guys survived but the guy inside was badly burned. It took him over a year to recover and he said he'd never go near a paint shop again. He had 20 years experience. It was a real freak accident but chit still happens.
 
Somewhere a coupla years ago, a fellow was attempting to weld a weight onto a chimney brush so the brush would go down his chimney better.

The weight was a live hand grenade. It blew the garage off of his house and him with it. He got a Darwin award.

You can't make this stuff up.
 
Several years ago when I still lived back in Ohio, there was an over the road truck driver who bought a "Ton" of fireworks and stored them in the attic of his bungalow . Came home and turned on the light switch inside the door. Blew the house all to He)) and the houses on both sides of his ,It blew them off the foundations bad enough to have to tare them down also !! Jim in N.M.
 
Seems kinda stupid to be welding light brackets onto trucks after they are put into use, especially considering they make ones that bolt on. What did they have for taillights if they had to add them? For the tank to fly into the air, wouldn't the bottom of the tank had to have blown open, directing the force of the blast downward? I can see it on a crude oil storage tank, as the bottoms of them tend to rust out. And who builds trucks with fiberglass cabs? Other than Western Star all the ones I know of are aluminum.
 
You can call BS on this . All I did was type what was written in the book. There is another one about a guy sitting on a drum cutting it and was blown 50 feet up to the ceiling.
 
Years ago, when I was a janitor, i heard the story of the guy in Philadelphia who wanted to strip a floor and didn't have the right chemicals. So he dumped 5gal of toluene on the floor, mopped it around and gave it some good time to soak.
When he started up the buffer, the fuel-air explosion destroyed the bottom two floors of the building, killing the janitor instantly.

I was never sure if it was a just-so story from a chemical salesman, or if it really happened. But it could have happened.
 
(quoted from post at 09:39:36 06/14/14) Probably a little exaggerated to warn people of the danger. I worked at a shop that built large oil field tanks. A couple guys in the paint shop were applying a coating to the inside of a tank. One guy was already in the tank and the second guy was just entering it when a static electricity spark set off an explosion in the tank. The tank rolled some and both guys survived but the guy inside was badly burned. It took him over a year to recover and he said he'd never go near a paint shop again. He had 20 years experience. It was a real freak accident but chit still happens.

Exactly the same thing happened in a nearby city a year and a half ago.
 
There"s so much about it that is BS, but there"s so many that one has to wonder who actually wrote the book. Number 1 would be putting the trucks in service before they are legal.
 

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