CA:Firefighter receives minor injury from burning Ammunition

Gun Watch ^ | 27 May, 2014 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Firefighters have known for years that burning small arms ammunition produces a very low level of danger  to firemen.   This is from the SAAMI paper, "Facts About Sporting Ammunition Fires":

 Ammunition fired in the open, not enclosed in a gun's chamber, discharges with such inefficiency that the projectile will not even penetrate an ordinary fiberboard shipping container panel at very close range. When not strongly and tightly confined, smokeless propellant powders burn relatively slowly and do not explode as we know they do when fired in a gun. Pressure within a cartridge case must build up to several thousand pounds per square inch to cause the cartridge to discharge as it does in a gun. Unless it is tightly confined, as in a gun chamber, no ammunition shell case will withstand the growing pressure of gases generated by burning propellant powder without bursting before the bullet or shot is expelled with violence or velocity.  

Casings propelled by this type of action would likely have to impact exposed skin or eyes to have any effect.  Actual injuries from such fires are so rare as to make the news, even if the injury is so minor as to normally go unreported.   Thus, this news from sandiego.com:

A firefighter was struck by a casing fragment and sustained a minor injury, Rodriguez said. He was treated at the scene and released back to duty. 

Treated at the scene and released.   This sounds like a band aid to me.    Firefighters, as government employees are carefully monitored; injuries are required to be reported because of the potential for workman's compensation and potential pension effects.   To be treated at the scene and released means that the injury was exceedingly minor. 

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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[marktwain]

As a wise friend reminded me, there are not enough details to let us know what really happened. I have never heard of unconfined ammunition exerting enough force to "fragment" cases; the "fragment" is not identified, and it is only an onscene report.

['smith]

The only injury I’ve seen or heard of of this type in 37 years of gunsmithing was when a 22 shell popped in a trash fire sending an 1/8” fragment of the casing wall into my 5 year old son’s cheek. It penetrated just beneath the skin with no serious damage. He was about 5 feet from the fire. At twice that distance, it most likely would have bounced off. A center-fire casing is much too thick to rupture in an un-contained detonation.

[Blood of Tyrants]

I have read that a lead bullet will melt before the powder gets hot enough to ignite. Sounds like a Mythbuster episode.

[TaMoDee]

Had a bullet frag hit my helmet once when .30 cal rds cooked off in a fire. I was about 6 feet away from the shelf.

[Joe Boucher]

Mark I have a friend who is an EMT fire lady in Jacksonville, Florida.
She is on the rural west side and I asked her her biggest fear?
She said every home has an arsenal and we always wonder just when pooh will hit the fan during a fire they are fighting.