Can I get a flash hood with my range pass please?

[Eric F]

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=8308602

7 injured in shooting range fire


Associated Press - May 12, 2008 6:55 AM ET

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - The Virginia Beach Fire Department says seven people were injured in a flash fire at an indoor shooting range.

Battalion Chief Leon Dextradeur says 2 of the injured are in critical condition with burns to their faces and smoke inhalation. Four people with less serious injuries also were taken to hospitals, and one declined to go to the hospital.

The fire started about 1:30 p.m. Sunday at A&P Arms' Lynnhaven Shooting Range. Dextradeur says there are three shooting ranges in the facility. An explosion at the end of range three started a flash fire that spread quickly toward people at the other end.

The cause of the fire has not been determined.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

I have shot here before and the place is usually very dirty and I have commented before to managment of the fire hazards I have noticed there.

 

[Seancass]

thats too bad. the owner is probly going to get sued pretty quick if it looks like he could have done something to prevent it.

 

[Eric F]

Local news reported tonight that the ATF is working the case. Nothing further tonight. News clip shows the place to be a total loss. One idiot was quoted as saying "any time you have stored ammunition there is a significant fire risk" It was some old dude in a pickup truck driving by that the news team stoped and interviewed. What a dope!

 

[rodregier]

Unburnt powder accumulates in indoor ranges if it isn't swept up and disposed of. If an operator were just to sweep it aside w/o removal, it would be a flash fire waiting for an ignition source to happen...

Concur about idiotic nature of comment on ammunition. Completed ammunition is about the safest storage mode available for smokeless powder.

 

[M60]

Was this guy there?




-Mark.

 

[larry_minn]

A range needs to be cleaned up ever now and again. Some folks reload so their is LOTS of unburnt powder going down range.

 

[C96]

I used to shoot .22 Bullseye. We shot in a room with a polished concrete floor. After each match we would sweep the floor and get a good pile of unburnt powder. Sometimes we would take the dustpan full outside and put a match to it.

Pretty good little fire. This was after just one bullseye match. I doubt it would take long for a commercial range to have enough for a real fire.

I believe an indoor range in Portland was destroyed by such a fire a few years ago.

 

[Eric F]

Being that the shooting comunity here is some what close I have a friend that works for the company that owns the range in question and aparently they wet mop every week. But again from my experience there the place was very dirty and the story is poorly written as far as where the fire started. I suspect that the carpets there were saturated with powder and the ignition took place in one of the stalls not down range as the story depicts.

 

[LaVere]

I was at a indoor range in the Detroit area several years ago. A bowling pin shoot. After my first shot. The powder on the floor in front caught on fire. 20 to 30 had to evacuate the building while the owners put out the fire. Nothing was damaged and no one hurt. After the smoke cleared we resumed shooting.
That was strange

 

[MASTEROFMALICE]

Funny story. Another gun dealer in the area had just sold tracer rounds to a guy who was going shooting there. That very same day, in fact.

The dealer I talked to told me he had warned him not to shoot those tracres indoors but the folks around this area don't seem to be overly intelligent.

 

[jayofthejungle1985]

WHAT? now i have NOWHERE to shoot!:banghead:

 

[Tribal]

A&P? That's bad; they've got some of the better prices and selection in the area. I also hope those two guys with facial burns weren't maimed.

I don't know how they are on cleanliness, but they're kind of hyper about keeping things slow at that range. Not even double taps are allowed, and every so often they draw down on people practicing unsafe gun handling (!!!). On the other hand, it's an indoor range for not only pistols but rifles as well, and I have no doubt that something like a PLR-16 used on a Sunday afternoon (I assume they mop after closing on Sundays for the week) is an accident waiting to happen.

I'm finding that gun clubs are better than public shooting ranges. Lafayette Gun Club is in Yorktown and Airfield Shooting Club is in, IIRC, Surrey.

 

[Big Boomer]

I have heard many times of fires (although not that big) happening many times in indoor ranges. The unburnt powder thing is real. Hell I look at my face after shooting after a long day and see plenty of it on my cheeks! Let it go for a year and you could have a damn good amount waiting to go poof!

That being said...ya I could have been the one to start it...MY BAD