Posted on 04/23/2015 4:55:31 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A gun enthusiast died in his Mountain View home on Thursday morning during a one-alarm fire that set off live rounds of ammunition in the garage, firefighters said. The fire broke out in the 700 block of Lola Lane about 3:30 a.m.
When firefighters arrived, they found the man dead in his bedroom.
Gary Macloud said he wanted to save his neighbor, "Dan," whom he identified as a gun aficionado and gun writer. But when he saw the thick smoke and the flames, he knew he couldn't help.
"We were yelling, Dan, Dan, Dan," Macloud said. "Your first instinct is to go in and try to do something."
But then he said, he stopped himself: "You realize if you go in there, you probably won't make it."
Mountain View Deputy Fire Chief Juan Diaz said the cause of the fire is under investigation, but fire officials said that the guns and ammunition did not start the blaze. In fact, the fire cause the ammunition to go off and exacerbate the fire.
Prolly just a box of 20 rounds. NBC, you know.
Guns. There was a fire. Ammo was on the scene. A man died. Gunowner. A neighbor wanted to help. Guns. It was a dangerous situation. Guns. Ammo exploded. Guns. Cause is not known. Ammo. Deputy Fire Chief said Ammo not involved. Guns.
Well at least they didn’t go with that old nonsense about firefighters could not get near because of the exploding ammo.
OMG, GUNZ!
Ammo doesn’t explode
What, no assault rifles?
Sounds like maybe a reloading accident.
He had ammo in his garage but he died in his bedroom. What am I missing?
As others said, ammo does not explode or fire off in a fire. At the most, it separates from the casing. No barrel and chamber means no deadly projectile.
More likely fire suicide
I hope my local lake doesn’t catch fire when I’m on my canoe. The lakes around here are just filled with ammo.
In his book “Gunshot Wounds” Vincent Di Maio describes various experiments where ammunition was heated in ovens. He says that .22 long rifle cartridges detonate at an average of 275F, .38 Special at 290F and 12 gauge shotgun shells at 387F. The interesting thing about these furnace experiments was that in all instances the cartridge cases ruptured, but the primers did not detonate. In fact the primers were removed from some of the ruptured cases, reloaded into other brass and fired.
When cartridges are placed in a fire he confirms that the most dangerous component of a cartridge is the brass, or fragments thereof that may cause eye injury or penetrate skin, but certainly there is no evidence that a cartridge that is not in a firearm can cause a mortal wound, either by action of the bullet or the brass/primer fragments. It is important to remember however that a chambered cartridge that detonates in a fire is just as dangerous as a cartridge that is fired under normal circumstances in a firearm.
To get a better understanding of the behaviour of free-standing ammunition in a fire, he conducted experiments with a propane torch. A total of 202 cartridges (handgun, centerfire rifle and shotgun cartridges) were used. If the heat was applied directly to the base of a shotgun shell the primer would detonate, the powder would ignite and the shell would rupture. Any pellets that emerged were traveling too slowly to be recorded on a chronograph.
In rifle and handgun cartridges where the flame was applied to the base of the cartridge the primers always detonated but the powder only ignited in half the cases and in those instances the cases did not rupture but the gas was instead vented through the primer hole.
When he heated these same handgun and rifle cartridges at the front, the powder would burn and the cases would usually rupture but with few exceptions the primers did not detonate. The velocity of expelled projectiles ranged from 58 ft/s to 123 ft/s. The only exception was the .270 cartridge where the bullet velocity was 230 ft/s. Primer velocities ranged from 180 ft/s to 830 ft/s.
As a side note he says that a revolver in a fire is especially dangerous because all the cartridges can cook off and be discharged such that there is a danger from projectiles. Only the bullet that came out of the barrel will have rifling marks and the ones that came from non-aligned chambers will have shear marks on them. Obviously if there is a question about the firing of a weapon and whether it was cooked off or fired intentionally they will look for a firing-pin impression on the primer of the suspect cartridge case.
References:
Sciuchetti G.D. Ammunition and fire. American Rifleman 144(3): 36-38, 59-60, March 1996.
Cooking-Off Cartridges. NRA Illustrated Reloading Handbook. Washington, D.C.: The National Rifle Association of America.
And of course Vincent Di Maio’s excellent book “Gunshot Wounds - practical aspects of firearms, ballistics and forensic technics”. My copy is the second edition, published by CRC Press, ISBN 0-8493-8163-0
This information can be found on pages 268-270.
Sounds like a fell asleep while smoking in bed to me.
I misread it. I thought they said he was in the garage at the time.
Well, you’ve gone and got logical — spoilsport.
Let me tell ya......a fire on the reloading bench is quite a mess!
When the black powder burns....it’s very black and sooty! What a clean-up mess!
Dad was soldering something, put the iron down on the workbench and it ignited a rag...which in turn spread to the end of the bench where the reloading area was ......oi!
He blowed himself into the bedroom.
lol...But they sure tied the headline to those evil objects.
Published on Nov 28, 2012
The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI), the standards-setting organization for the industry, has provided this video to fire departments nationwide to help firefighters better address the realities of fires in which sporting ammunition is present.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlOXowwC4c
There must have been bullets whizzing around everywhere! /s
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