[John Buchtenkirch]

Originally Posted by Marty Comstock

Our shop is wood, and uninsured. Cheaper to rebuild if if anything happened.

Paint and chemicals one one side of the shop, welding tanks on the other.

Dad and I follow one simple rule, USE YOUR HEAD.

You can live in fear, or you can get stuff done. You cant prevent acts of god, but you can save yourself from your worst enemy, yourself.

WHY did that propane tank explode, and what are the odds of it happening again?

Marty, somehow you’ve read my post #7 and still don’t quite seem to understand what happened, I guess I wasn’t that clear. The propane bottle didn’t blow up and start the fire.

The fire started somewhere in the building and was reported, the fire men and trucks had reached the building and were setting up, the fire finally reached one of the forklifts in the warehouse and cooked off the propane bottle, the explosion caused all the firemen to back off to a safer distance and just watch the building burn out.

Could you not imagine the same thing happening at our shops if there was a fire and the oxygen or acetylene bottles cooked off ? THAT IS WHAT I’M AFRAID OF and why I linked the bottle truck explosions in my very first post. There are several dealer body shops here on Long Island that have the oxygen & acetylene piped thru the shop and each body man has his own regulators and torches but no bottles. That is what I’m kinda interested in…….. yes, maybe overkill but I’d probably sleep better at night.

I do agree with you 100% that the best first line of defense is being careful and I will add having a lot of full fire extinguishers around. I did heavy collision work for quite a few years and straightened a bunch of frames with pulling and a monster rosebud torch, caused a few minor fires and I always managed to knock them out. I guess I just worry about an electrical fire starting when I might not be around or I’m asleep. You get older and you tend to worry more , I’d just never recover from a complete building loss (plus the cars & equipment) at my age. ~ John Buchtenkirch