SAFETY FIRST

Ted Clark, CLCS, Loss Control Representative, Acadia Insurance

Spring is finally starting to wind down and hopefully, by the time you read this article, you have been back to work and are enjoying the benefits of a productive, dry summer. Spring never fails to be our busiest time of year with inspections, meetings and more training sessions than I can count.

Hopefully you found the spring training sessions to be beneficial for you and your employees and everyone was able to take away a few bits of information that will help improve your overall risk management and ultimately, your profitability. I have always found myself amazed by the amount of information I learn from you and your employees each year. This information serves a variety of purposes from modifying the message I deliver to recognizing the need for a new training topic.

This year, while delving deep into fire suppression, the need for more consistent reminders to employees on how to act in the event of a machine fire came up nearly every session that I taught. Armed with that information I decided it would be beneficial to write an article that you can cut out of your newsletter, to take out to read, word for word, to your employees to remind them of what they should do if their machine catches fire. So here we go:

A fire on a forestry machine can halt production, create a significant hazard to life safety and ultimately cripple a business. Taking a few steps to prevent a fire and knowing how to act, as an operator, when a fire occurs can make an enormous difference in the outcome.

As an operator, you are the key to preventing fires on machines. Remember that fire requires heat, fuel and oxygen to burn. Therefore, if you want to prevent a fire from occurring, you need to eliminate at least one of these from your machine.

As discussed during our spring training, there is no way to prevent the heat generated on your machine and there is no way to eliminate the oxygen, those are factors that we have to live with as they are a result of the machine operating. Accepting that we can’t eliminate the heat and the oxygen, you have to understand that the only way to prevent a fire from occurring on your machine is to minimize the fuel build up.

From diesel fuel to hydraulic fluid, logging machines have an enormous amount of fuels to contend with. The fuel that causes the biggest concern for fires is the buildup of wood debris. Wood debris will ignite at a very low temperature and can cause a fire to rapidly spread through a machine. As the operator, it is your responsibility to try and minimize the debris build up in the machine. Daily clean outs and occasional pressure washing will go a long way toward preventing debris build up. Also basic maintenance such as repairing leaks and inspecting electrical lines for chafe can go a long way towards preventing a fire.

In the event your machine catches fire, several quick steps can make the difference between saving the machine and a total fire loss that leaves you without a machine for a significant period of time. The steps are as follows:

▪Try to remain calm and call for help. Typically, when a machine catches fire you will have a few seconds to catch your breath and make sure you are thinking straight. A mobile machine like a skidder allows you access to extinguishers quickly and this may make the difference between saving the machine or not.

▪Ground the machine’s hydraulics out.

▪Turn off the machine. This is the most critical step. If the machine is left on, you will continue to feed the fire with the engine fan and fluids pumping, often rendering the fire suppression system ineffective.

▪Set the fire suppression system off manually. In order for the fire suppression system to go off automatically there has to be enough heat generated inside the machine to melt through wiring or pressure tubing, the fire can spread rapidly before you generate enough heat to set the system off which makes it less effective. If you set the system off manually, you get the suppression onto the fire while it is much smaller, increasing the chance of fully extinguishing the fire.

▪Exit the machine and stand by with your handheld extinguishers. Depending on where the fire occurred and amount of debris, you will likely need to re-extinguish the fire using your handheld extinguisher. Your loaded stream (water can), will likely be the most effective means of extinguishing a rekindle because of its cooling effect and pinpoint accuracy.

▪Use available portable extinguishers on the machine once the fire is out. A fire that starts deep in debris may take a while to re-kindle, tricking you in to believing the fire was completely extinguished. Discharging your extinguishers into the area where the fire started will add an additional layer of protection to assure the fire does not rekindle once you have left the machine.