Re: Halon

Posted by NCWayne on February 16, 2010 at 11:52:03 from (166.82.79.195):

In Reply to: Halon posted by buickanddeere on February 16, 2010 at 04:06:00:

Yep, we had big Halon bottles all over the main spaces on both of the ships I was on. If I remember correctly the destroyer had 8 300lb bottles and the carrier had 12 300lb bottles. It was overkill to a large degree but it was intentional overkill for the sake of safety. On thing many people don't realize is that a shipboard fire, especially an engine room fire, is the worst thing that can possibly happen to a ship. As such they take firefighting and the materials used to do it VERY seriously. As for the halon systems in our spaces, they were designed to only be used in an emergency as they did create hazardous fumes when the halon came into contact with the flame. As such the systems could only be set off from outside the space as you evacuated. We were still trained what do do if caught in the space when the system went off, and that was basically get your breathing device on and active ASAP and go to a protected area away from the flames if possible. Beyond that it was pretty much KYA goodbye and pray to be rescued.

Hazardous or not halon is the most effective fire fighting system I have ever seen. The system in our space on the destroyer got set off by a drunk coming in off of liberty one night. Talk about the sh!t hitting the fan over an incident, it did over that!!!!! Fortunately we were in port and our space was the one shutdown and the only guy on watch was in the operating booth. When the system went off it automatically shut down ventilation, etc in the spaces and closed all dampers, basically isolating the space. Even with that kind of isolation the boilers in the fireroom forward of our space caught a whiff of the stuff and it nearly put them out. Think about how "good" the stuff had to be to nearly extinguish a pressure feed, oil fired flame.

As far as it being used on aircraft they did/do that because Halon does not leave any type of residue so any systems uneffected by the flames will remain uneffected by the extinguishing agent. We were always trained that it was AFF if possible or if not PKP for the fuel fires, PKP for anything non electrical, and CO2 for anything electrical. Our only use of halon was for flooding the mainspace in case of a major fire. We were also trained to put out pretty much any type of fire, including fuel and electrical, using nothing but water. With the fuel you pushed it to the side of the space and knocked it out, with electrical you used a High velocity fog and the water particles were supposed to be far apart enough not to conduct electricity back to you. Fortunately I never had to test either process except for the fuel fire. That was just in a training exercise where the whole whole floor of a two story building simulating a mainspace/engine room was a puddle of fuel. They lit it off and we put out with two hose teams using nothing but water. Now that was exciting.

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