Rounds go off during house fire?

Ammo definitely cooks off during a fire. When ammo starts going off who's to say there aren't some loaded firearms in the house as well? That's where the real danger is and I wouldn't rush in to fight that fire.

i rushed in to fight those fires for 23 years. possible guns and ammo didnt even enter into the priorities you would have in a residential fire.

jmorris said:

It will “go off”. Bent over to stoke a camp fire when I was a kid and the shirt pocket full of .22 rounds that fell in the coals caused damage to the tent. Not very dramatic but can happen none the less. Kind of like popcorn throwing burning wood.

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EXACTLY. The shells EXPLODE they don't fire. How can something fire without a barrel? In Vietnam, we used to 30-40 times, throw a few .223 into a fire just to liven things up.
What really gets people scrabbling is when some boot cleans a M60 and putting it back together screws it up so when he pulled the charging handle back, fired from open bolt, it goes full auto with NOBODY on the trigger. The closest guy had to break the belt to stop it.

Ammunition will cook off/explode/pop, or whatever, when exposed to sufficient heat, as in a house fire. When that happens, if anything is going to go flying, it is the lightest part of the cartridge, the cartridge case. And since the cartridge/s are uncontained and cannot build up significant pressure, velocity is low. One night, while I was still a Patrol Sergeant in the big city, I responded to a residential fire. I recognized the home's owner as a gentleman I'd bought ammo from on multiple occasions at gun shows. I have no doubt there were many thousands of rounds stored at his residence. There was the popping sound of many rounds cooking off. There were cartridge cases, and some metal links, landing in the street out front.

Now I wouldn't want to be hit in the eye by any of those links or cases, but that was about the extent of many thousands of rounds cooking off at the residence. Otherwise, it appeared to me to be no different than other residential fires I'd responded to....

boom boom said:

For the paranoid, keep plastic gallon jugs of water in the cabinet above the powders and primers.

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From my personal experience attempting to store plastic gallon jugs of water (LDPE milk jug type plastic): these *will* split and leak within a few months. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Alec said:

From my personal experience attempting to store plastic gallon jugs of water (LDPE milk jug type plastic): these *will* split and leak within a few months. I wouldn’t recommend it.

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Well live and learn, I never knew that. Thanks for passing it along.

Ron

Trailer fire up the street had folks yelling about ammo cooking off and the occasional loud boom and then whitish flames around the roof edge had them convinced they were seeing ammo explosions....what they were seeing was the effect of the safety plugs on portable O2 tanks the old guy used blowing out and the O2 venting and making the fire hot enough that the aluminum would produce white flames. After it was over the remains of about two dozen O2 tanks were found.

As volunteers without modern turn out gear (hey hose me down with the fogger!) we were far more afraid of window AC units and refridgerator/ freezer pressure vessels than ammo.

-kBob

There are a number of household items that go snap, crackle, pop in a house fire. Consider all of the aerosol cans for instance.

What we were told was that the rounds you hear, as the house is burning, is from ammunition cooking off in the house fire. The terrorists were all dead by the time it was safe for the camera man to poke his head up and take pictures.

Symbionese Liberation Army video house burning





There is about one ammunition dump exploding per month.



Gunpowder deterioration causes fires, spontaneous ignition of the gunpowder. I don't know if small arms rounds will cause these huge explosions, but the artillery shells will.

A small portion of a news story I just read regarding the California fires.

Jan McGregor, 81, got back to his small two-bedroom home in Paradise with the help of his firefighter grandson. He found his home leveled -- a large metal safe and pipes from his septic system the only recognizable traces. The safe was punctured with bullet holes from guns inside that went off in the scorching heat.

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Apparently, as discussed earlier, loaded guns with the rounds in the chambers cooking off.

Ron

Souvenirs from The Incident of 2010.
Scorched but not ignited. Contents taste tested normal. One of them, anyhow.

So I'm thinking of putting a sprinkler head (heat activated type) connected to the cold water line over my safe. Since this is the basement any fire consuming the house will probably cause the basement to become an inferno. I figure it would help if I can add another hour to the fire rating by keeping the safe cooled down for a while. I realize that once the main floor collapses all bets are off.

Any thoughts from you fire fighters?

alfsauve said:

So I'm thinking of putting a sprinkler head (heat activated type) connected to the cold water line over my safe. Since this is the basement any fire consuming the house will probably cause the basement to become an inferno. I figure it would help if I can add another hour to the fire rating by keeping the safe cooled down for a while. I realize that once the main floor collapses all bets are off.

Any thoughts from you fire fighters?

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I’d bet it’s a descent idea. Should work for ammo and loading components too if stored watertight. I’ve seen a 8# keg of reddot that survived a house fire. House destroyed but it was in the bottom of a closet and the cloths bar collapsed and cloths fell on it covering it.

I have an idea for a new bench I’m building.
Bench happens to go in a corner of the house. (Slab floor and brick exterior) build a wood cabinet under the bench in the corner of the room. So it sets on the floor basically. Outside 1” wood. And inside line it in Ridgid fiberglass insulation. Like what guys use to make oversized ovens for powder coating. That way you’d have some hope of it surviving a house fire. I live in town and we have a pretty dang good VFD less than 2 miles from my house.

I’m usually of the mind set that I don’t really care about stuff as long as the people are out, but it could happen at a bad time when stuff like reloading components are impossible to get. May build another for ammo on the other leg of the bench.

alfsauve said:

So I'm thinking of putting a sprinkler head (heat activated type) connected to the cold water line over my safe. Since this is the basement any fire consuming the house will probably cause the basement to become an inferno. I figure it would help if I can add another hour to the fire rating by keeping the safe cooled down for a while. I realize that once the main floor collapses all bets are off.

Any thoughts from you fire fighters?

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Well I'm not a firefighter but I will share a few thoughts.

Before I retired we had some extensive work done in the plant where other work had just been done. This involved removing several sprinkler heads. I asked the workers what they were going to do with the sprinkler heads and they were going to just pitch them out. I asked they pitch a few in my office. There are a few things to know. You want to place a back flow prevention check valve upstream of your sprinkler head. You also want to place a downstream valve and discharge port. Since water to a sprinkler head just sits dead head you don't want contaminated old water backing into your house water supply and you want to be able to flush that line maybe a few times a year.

Where I live police and fire response times are very good. My gun safe room is on a slab with no basement but my basement does run right up to that point making it easy to install a 3/4" copper line right off the house feed line. Right up the inside wall, through the "gun room" and exit out the front of the house for flushing. Anyway there are a few things to consider.

Ron

Slamfire said:

Gunpowder deterioration causes fires, spontaneous ignition of the gunpowder. I don't know if small arms rounds will cause these huge explosions, but the artillery shells will.

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Well, artillery shells are made to explode. Small arms ammo isn't. That's your clue for the day.

It would be interesting to see - from a distance - whether the bursting charge or the propellant lit off first. Assuming fixed ammo, of course.

Reloadron said:

Well live and learn, I never knew that. Thanks for passing it along.

Ron

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Yup, just trying to save someone the damage I caused with my mistake! I should also add that I misspoke, milk jugs are usually made of HDPE.

We have a 55 gallon metal drum at the range that's used as a burn barrel. Inevitably somebody always accidentally tosses what they thought was an empty box of ammo when it may have a few rounds left

The fire will cause a pop, not nearly as loud as being fired from a gun and that's it.

Where I used to live there was a fuel station that sold ammo. A truck went through the fuel pumps and into the station where a fire occurred. The firefighters said quite a bit of ammo was popping off.