Will Salt Put Out A Fire? - FirefighterNOW
Salt is a brilliant choice for fighting fires for three key reasons: it doesn’t burn, it has a high melting point, and it is effective at smothering a flame. The salt that you have at home as table salt is just a crystalized form of sodium chloride.
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Unless I’m missing something, Glenn Tremble is FOS. This fire, or a large part of it, was according to pictures, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. No shortage of water there!
What we are seeing in Lahaina is that the bureaucratic mind is a dangerous, indeed murderous, thing.
Presuming there were firetrucks in Lahaina, a firetruck is nothing more than a PUMP. What’s the stated reason for NOT using them to pump water out of the ocean?
My first thought was why not use seawater? I lived very rural and every fire used three pumper trucks to pump lake water and relay it to the fire scene. Any air drops of seawater from aircraft? Any flame retardants? None of this makes sense or smells genuine.
Not sure but I believe it would be corrosive to the metal in the truck. No excuses for not using it given the dire conditions they were facing, but might explain resasoning.
For the same reason you don’t put salt water in the radiator of your car.
Salt destroys metal, and it does it rather quickly.
Your fire fighting apparatus would become junk before you were done using it.
I don’t know how many fire trucks there were or their ability to pump from the ocean.
An obvious solution, clearly.
The water that was denied to them would have gone to hydrants throughout the town.
Even citizens could have used those.