Just wondering. I heard of stories of firefighters can't save a building because the house has ammo inside. So when fire burns them, the popping starts. To me, the bullets will only have enough umph if they're directed by something, such as a barrel. If it's just burned, wouldn't the bullets pop out like popcorn and it wont cause much damage?
What happens when ammunition is burned in fire?
- Thread starter AirPower
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It's the primers exploding from the heat and they can be dangerous flying around. It's not the bullets they usually won't exit the case, but the primers will. Kinda of a reverse effect, primers are lighter than the bullet.
Saw a fire where a guy had a live 50 cal round sitting up right on a wood shelf. The heat ignited the primer and it blew a hole through a 3/4" board like a 22 bullet. Other primers had done pretty good impact damage also.
By dangerous I did not mean deadly!! And by damage I mean ouch damage not penetrating damage.
Saw a fire where a guy had a live 50 cal round sitting up right on a wood shelf. The heat ignited the primer and it blew a hole through a 3/4" board like a 22 bullet. Other primers had done pretty good impact damage also.
By dangerous I did not mean deadly!! And by damage I mean ouch damage not penetrating damage.
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rangerruck
Member
'w' is right on.
feedthehogs
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My son inlaw is a firefighter and has told me the department is shifting from
property loss to more of a personal saving focus only.
Because of the increase in deaths fighting property fires across the country, anytime any danger to fire personal is suspected, chemical, ammo, explosive, the department has backed off to the point where the structure is allowed to burn itself out while the fire fighters are at a distance concentrating on keeping property nearby from being engulfed.
There have been mumerous instances local of where the fire department has learned there was ammo inside the house or in a nearby structure like a storage shed and have allowed the house to burn to the ground while at a distance.
One case, the owner who tried to fight the fire himself after fire personal backed off because of some .22 ammo in a storage shed was arrested by police for trying to save his own house.
It was an older guy who never up'd his homeowners to cover inflation rebuilding costs because he though his house would never be allowed to burn to the foundation.
His insurance would only pay about half the cost to totaly rebuild his structure.
To make matters worse, the city started fining him to bulldoze a clear the burned out hulk and to start rebuilding even though he didn't have the money.
Insult upon injury.
So store your ammo carefully. Chances are if the fire department finds out, they will back off and your structure will be allowed to burn itself out.
property loss to more of a personal saving focus only.
Because of the increase in deaths fighting property fires across the country, anytime any danger to fire personal is suspected, chemical, ammo, explosive, the department has backed off to the point where the structure is allowed to burn itself out while the fire fighters are at a distance concentrating on keeping property nearby from being engulfed.
There have been mumerous instances local of where the fire department has learned there was ammo inside the house or in a nearby structure like a storage shed and have allowed the house to burn to the ground while at a distance.
One case, the owner who tried to fight the fire himself after fire personal backed off because of some .22 ammo in a storage shed was arrested by police for trying to save his own house.
It was an older guy who never up'd his homeowners to cover inflation rebuilding costs because he though his house would never be allowed to burn to the foundation.
His insurance would only pay about half the cost to totaly rebuild his structure.
To make matters worse, the city started fining him to bulldoze a clear the burned out hulk and to start rebuilding even though he didn't have the money.
Insult upon injury.
So store your ammo carefully. Chances are if the fire department finds out, they will back off and your structure will be allowed to burn itself out.
Abby
Member
I'd also point out that, based on some personal experience I've had during this year's "overseas employment opportunity," ammunition does NOT burn very easily.
We lost an entire building at one point and although primers went off, and other things blew up, when we finally sifted through the ashes, there were a lot of intact rounds singly, in magazines and in ammunition cans. Nobody (as far as I know) tried to use any of that, but I was a little surprised that it didn't all go up.
We all think of ammunition as pretty volatile (myself included, and that's probably not a bad thing), but I was interested to learn that having rounds in one's house is not at all like keeping Molotov cocktails in the living room.
We lost an entire building at one point and although primers went off, and other things blew up, when we finally sifted through the ashes, there were a lot of intact rounds singly, in magazines and in ammunition cans. Nobody (as far as I know) tried to use any of that, but I was a little surprised that it didn't all go up.
We all think of ammunition as pretty volatile (myself included, and that's probably not a bad thing), but I was interested to learn that having rounds in one's house is not at all like keeping Molotov cocktails in the living room.
Falconeer
Member
So, what I should keep the Molotovs somewhere else??Abby said:
unspellable
Member
Ammo in fire
Some years ago the NRA or somebody ran a test for this. They various center fire rounds such as the 30-06 under an ordinary corregated box and touched them off with heat. In most cases the bullet was blown out of the case but the significant part was that nothing penetrated the corregated box.
Some fire departments are put off by ammo in a fire but the truth is it just isn't that much of a hazard.
Some years ago the NRA or somebody ran a test for this. They various center fire rounds such as the 30-06 under an ordinary corregated box and touched them off with heat. In most cases the bullet was blown out of the case but the significant part was that nothing penetrated the corregated box.
Some fire departments are put off by ammo in a fire but the truth is it just isn't that much of a hazard.
Rickstir
Member
In St. Louis they passed a law several years ago that said basically anytime the police get a raise the fire department gets one too. Now I have the utmost respect and appreciation of fire fighters. Those 324 in NY did not stand back and watch. But the basic difference between police and fire fighters is just this. They can choose to stand back and watch. In the event there is a situation that requires an officer to save someone, that office WILL go through the door and not stand back and watch.
shermacman
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I know from experience that .22lr ammo thrown into a campfire will pop like popcorn. Nothing more exciting than that.
that .22lr ammo thrown into a campfire will pop like popcorn. Nothing more exciting than that.hotpig
Member
We have a policy to stand back if there is a quantity of has mat in the building. It has been twenty years since last time we let a barn burn because it was full of ag chemicals.
Standing back because there is consumer quantities of ammo or chemicals is just mind boggling to me. I bet some Insurance Companies will rectify the situation when they see this happening. A few more cases of FD buying new houses for people should turn this trend back around.
Standing back because there is consumer quantities of ammo or chemicals is just mind boggling to me. I bet some Insurance Companies will rectify the situation when they see this happening. A few more cases of FD buying new houses for people should turn this trend back around.
Abby
Member
Falconeer-
In the liquor cabinet, of course!
In the liquor cabinet, of course!
chopinbloc
Member
okay, i KNOW this one is gonna get me flamed but i'm gonna say it anyway:
fire fighters and especially their unions are heavily Democrat.
fire fighters wear very thick clothing.
primers from normal (not .50 bmg) rounds are not likely to penetrate enough to even come close to representing a credible threat. that is, while there may be some small risk, is is nowhere near the risk represented by a six-pack of wd-40 cooking off or a five gallon propane tank.
it is therefore my opinion that these decisions to let someone's life burn to the ground are vindictive and politically motivated. correct me if i'm wrong but their job is firefighter, right? not firepreventer or firequarantine. look, cops are supposed to apprehend criminals, paramedics are supposed to render medical aid and i'm supposed to kill the enemy, right? i mean public servants are paid to provide a specific service and no one forced them to take the job. if ammunition cooking off is such a hazard than why whould they let it do so and endanger the entire neighborhood? because some lousy bureaucrats decided to punish firearms owners.
fire fighters and especially their unions are heavily Democrat.
fire fighters wear very thick clothing.
primers from normal (not .50 bmg) rounds are not likely to penetrate enough to even come close to representing a credible threat. that is, while there may be some small risk, is is nowhere near the risk represented by a six-pack of wd-40 cooking off or a five gallon propane tank.
it is therefore my opinion that these decisions to let someone's life burn to the ground are vindictive and politically motivated. correct me if i'm wrong but their job is firefighter, right? not firepreventer or firequarantine. look, cops are supposed to apprehend criminals, paramedics are supposed to render medical aid and i'm supposed to kill the enemy, right? i mean public servants are paid to provide a specific service and no one forced them to take the job. if ammunition cooking off is such a hazard than why whould they let it do so and endanger the entire neighborhood? because some lousy bureaucrats decided to punish firearms owners.
hotpig
Member
I'm a Career Firefighter, my Father and his brother are retired FF. My older brother is a Fire Chief, my younger brother and sister have been volunteer firefighters in the past.
There is no political agenda to this. I can only even think of a few Democrat ff. Most are Republicans. The Unions are Democrat but there is nothing its members can do to change that. Police Chief associations are anti-gun but not the average cop or even the Police Chief.
These are long standing agreements that were made long before any of us were born. It would be crazy for one person to stand out by trying to make a change in these organizations.
There is no political agenda to this. I can only even think of a few Democrat ff. Most are Republicans. The Unions are Democrat but there is nothing its members can do to change that. Police Chief associations are anti-gun but not the average cop or even the Police Chief.
These are long standing agreements that were made long before any of us were born. It would be crazy for one person to stand out by trying to make a change in these organizations.
M2 Carbine
member
In 1995 my gun shop burned to the ground.
It contained well over 20,000 rounds of loaded ammo, about a dozen cans of powder, many thousands of primers and seven (unloaded) guns.
It got very interesting.
Almost all the ammo was in GI 50 cal metal ammo cans.
Which is the way you should store your ammo whether you have 20 boxes or 2000 boxes.
Interesting things happened with the ammo cans.
One can contained AK ammo, which all exploded, beating the can badly but the lid held and there wasn't a hole in the can.
Other cans had large holes torn in them.
The theory that the loaded ammo just harmlessly pops?
Don't bet your life on it. I found many bullet holes in things that weren't totally burned. In some cases the bullet had enough power to go through a number of things, after going through a steel ammo can. The Red circles point out some of the bullet holes in these cans. Plus most cans had holes blown in them.
(got to get a better picture)
This can is very interesting. It was about 15 feet from the fire and contained 9mm ammo in plastic boxes. Somehow only less than a box of rounds exploded. As you can see this handful of 9mm didn't just pop harmlessly but there's no chain reaction. Interestingly the ammo that blew was near the side away from the fire.
I later shot all the remaining rounds.
Gun powder doesn't explode if left in the original container. The gun powder cans just popped their tops or bottoms. The exploded cans are WD40 and Black Powder. There was no doubt when they cooked off, they do EXPLODE.
Note the bullet hole in the center can.
BTW, I wouldn't let the fireman near this fire until it was burned out but in this part of the country if fireman didn't fight every house fire because there was guns and ammo in the house, they wouldn't be fighting many fires.
It contained well over 20,000 rounds of loaded ammo, about a dozen cans of powder, many thousands of primers and seven (unloaded) guns.
It got very interesting.
Almost all the ammo was in GI 50 cal metal ammo cans.
Which is the way you should store your ammo whether you have 20 boxes or 2000 boxes.
Interesting things happened with the ammo cans.
One can contained AK ammo, which all exploded, beating the can badly but the lid held and there wasn't a hole in the can.
Other cans had large holes torn in them.
The theory that the loaded ammo just harmlessly pops?
Don't bet your life on it. I found many bullet holes in things that weren't totally burned. In some cases the bullet had enough power to go through a number of things, after going through a steel ammo can. The Red circles point out some of the bullet holes in these cans. Plus most cans had holes blown in them.
(got to get a better picture)
This can is very interesting. It was about 15 feet from the fire and contained 9mm ammo in plastic boxes. Somehow only less than a box of rounds exploded. As you can see this handful of 9mm didn't just pop harmlessly but there's no chain reaction. Interestingly the ammo that blew was near the side away from the fire.
I later shot all the remaining rounds.
Gun powder doesn't explode if left in the original container. The gun powder cans just popped their tops or bottoms. The exploded cans are WD40 and Black Powder. There was no doubt when they cooked off, they do EXPLODE.
Note the bullet hole in the center can.
BTW, I wouldn't let the fireman near this fire until it was burned out but in this part of the country if fireman didn't fight every house fire because there was guns and ammo in the house, they wouldn't be fighting many fires.
hotpig
Member
Most home owners have small amounts of ammo that are not in sealed metal cans. I work in a rural area so pretty much everybody has some kind of gun.The rounds just pop off harmlessly, I have been hit a number of times this way.
If you confine the ammo in a metal can or gun it can react like the pictures above. The last house fire that I went in the guys Glock cooked off its mag. I used the gunfire to lead me to the fire room. I did wait until the shots stopped before going down the hall to the room.
If you confine the ammo in a metal can or gun it can react like the pictures above. The last house fire that I went in the guys Glock cooked off its mag. I used the gunfire to lead me to the fire room. I did wait until the shots stopped before going down the hall to the room.
unspellable
Member
loaded gun
A loaded gun in a fire might be a whole 'nother issue.
A loaded gun in a fire might be a whole 'nother issue.
Rickstir, I recommend the book "Dial 911 and Die" if you think the police have to come to the door or do anything else, for that matter. I'm not anti-police. I'm thankful for their hardwork and service, often for low pay and not a lot of thanks. However, the law in most states does not require the police to protect any individual, only the public as a whole. If the police screw up, forget, or just decide something is too dangerous, they will not be held accountable for the consequences of their decisions in most cases. Now, if they DO something wrong, like beat a suspect, then they are liable, but rarely will they be liable for FAILING to do something, like come to rescue you or your family. Best be ready to do that yourself.
For 25+ years I have disposed of all my junk ammo by dropping it in the wood stove in the kitchen. The primers pop and the powder burns up, no explosions. Most times the bullet is still in the case, sometimes it will actually separate from the case and actually travel 2 or 3 inches. Just MHO from experience.
R.T.
R.T.
Knob Creeker
Member
Last fall about 8-10 of us were standing around a campfire when some jerk decided to toss in a few live round (22) without telling anyone. The first one went off and sounded like a loud firecracker. My friend standing beside me screamed that he had been hit. One of the casings had burst and a piece of brass had embedded itself in his jacket. It didn’t have enough force to get all the way through to his flesh, but he was wearing carhartt and that stuff is bombproof. It scared him a lot worse than it actually hurt him, but he did have a nice welt and bruise the next day. Had he just been wearing a t-shirt or it hit him in the face/eye it would have bit him pretty good.
We made a hasty retreat behind some trees until all the rest of the shells had gone off.
Maybe 22 ammo detonates with more force due to lack of separate primer? If some curious individual would like to pursue this with an experiment, I will happily await your observations from behind a big rock or hickory stump.
We made a hasty retreat behind some trees until all the rest of the shells had gone off.
Maybe 22 ammo detonates with more force due to lack of separate primer? If some curious individual would like to pursue this with an experiment, I will happily await your observations from behind a big rock or hickory stump.
epijunkie67
Member
That's actually a very reasonable theory. With centerfire ammo there are two places with a natuaral weakness, the primer and the bullet. But with rimfire ammo the only weak spot would be the bullet. I would expect rimfire to "pop" with more force than a centerfire round.
I have worked as a firefighter for the last 14 years. According to our departments website, we responded on something like 4000 fires last year. I have never heard of anyone "standing back" and letting anything burn. People who say things like this make me laugh. Firefighters live for firefighting. They eat, drink, and sleep firefighting. Most of the firefighters I know would rather fight a fire than almost anything else in the world. These guys fight each other to see who is going to be the first guy in the door with a nozzle. You don't have any way of knowing this, but when you write something like "they just stand back", this is absolutely ridiculous. It would be like saying a dog was too lazy to eat a prime rib off the floor. I openly laughed when I read that. Some of these guys have taken every class even remotely related to firefighting, gone to the gym every day and taken every employment test in the country for years to get this job and you post that they are just going to stand back and watch something burn ? Do you realize that there are newspapers published that have nothing but notices for fire department tests so people can fly all over the country to test every chance they get hoping to get on somewhere ? For a city of any size, there are thousands of applicants for every single person eventually hired. And people on the internet post stuff like this ?
This might have happened somewhere. Maybe a volunteer department somewhere with a bunch of overweight, drunk volunteers. But, not with any professional firefigthers I have ever met.
I have never heard of anyone being injured by exploding ammunition. I HAVE seen people hit by bullets that resuled from ammunition exposed to fire, but they wern't injured.
The incident commander of every incident makes a decision about how much risk to expose his people to. Personal property is not worth people's lives. Some pretty extreme risks are routinely taken if someone's life is in danger, an empty building with no life threat that is obviously dangerous and beyond saving is another story.
Firefighting is a dangerous profession and there is a certain amount of danger present at every incident we respond to. Structural firefighting is probably the most dangerous thing we do. And, there are guidelines as to whether or not we are making progress on the fire we are fighting. If not, then we pull out. There is no point in risking lives when we arn't accomplishing anything. This decision is based on time and how much water we are putting on the fire, not by the pressence of ammo in the building. Just as an off the wall example, lets say we are flowing 2000 gpm for five minutes on a fire and the fire shows no sign of decreasing. The IC says to himself: this fire burned "X" minutes prior to our arrival. We began putting water on the fire five minutes ago. So the fire has had "Y" minutes to damage the structural integrity of that building. In addition to that structural damage, the building now has the weight of 10,000 gallons of water in it. We are pulling our people out and protecting the exposures.
This is exactly the same for law enforcement, contrary to the BS posted above, no police officer is going to risk his life for nothing other than the protection of someone's personal property. If someone's life is at risk, that is another story.
This might have happened somewhere. Maybe a volunteer department somewhere with a bunch of overweight, drunk volunteers. But, not with any professional firefigthers I have ever met.
I have never heard of anyone being injured by exploding ammunition. I HAVE seen people hit by bullets that resuled from ammunition exposed to fire, but they wern't injured.
The incident commander of every incident makes a decision about how much risk to expose his people to. Personal property is not worth people's lives. Some pretty extreme risks are routinely taken if someone's life is in danger, an empty building with no life threat that is obviously dangerous and beyond saving is another story.
Firefighting is a dangerous profession and there is a certain amount of danger present at every incident we respond to. Structural firefighting is probably the most dangerous thing we do. And, there are guidelines as to whether or not we are making progress on the fire we are fighting. If not, then we pull out. There is no point in risking lives when we arn't accomplishing anything. This decision is based on time and how much water we are putting on the fire, not by the pressence of ammo in the building. Just as an off the wall example, lets say we are flowing 2000 gpm for five minutes on a fire and the fire shows no sign of decreasing. The IC says to himself: this fire burned "X" minutes prior to our arrival. We began putting water on the fire five minutes ago. So the fire has had "Y" minutes to damage the structural integrity of that building. In addition to that structural damage, the building now has the weight of 10,000 gallons of water in it. We are pulling our people out and protecting the exposures.
This is exactly the same for law enforcement, contrary to the BS posted above, no police officer is going to risk his life for nothing other than the protection of someone's personal property. If someone's life is at risk, that is another story.
cbsbyte
Member
For experience from throwing a few centerfire rife/pistol rounds into a camp fire, it just pops but does not explode. Throwing a few embers out of the fire pit. But a large fire with hundreds, or thousands of rounds of ammo in containers, could be a big flare up when the powder cooks off. I would not want to be near it when it hits the combustion point.
hotpig
Member
Shotgun12
The only documented cases that I have read involved loaded weapons that cooked of their mags during a fire.
The only documented cases that I have read involved loaded weapons that cooked of their mags during a fire.
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