Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios
Welcome to Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios! Get ready to dive into a world where safety meets storytelling! Drawing from his rich background as a former firefighter, EMT and safety expert, Jimmy brings you straight into the heart of safety and emergency preparedness. Episodes feature easy-to-understand tips, real-life stories, and interviews with experts, all designed to help you protect yourself, your business, and those you care about.
Whether it's advice on navigating everyday safety challenges or insights into the latest in health and safety trends, let this podcast educate and entertain you. Join Jimmy and level-up your safety knowledge with engaging discussions that could one day save a life.
Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios
Fire Safety Fails: Powder Explosions, Grease Fires & More!
In this episode, we're turning up the heat with a look at fire safety fails that could have become real disasters. From grease fires to Tesla fires, to powder explosions, we’re sharing real stories of mishaps that took everyone by surprise. Alongside these fiery stories, we’ll break down some simple, smart tips to help you handle fire hazards like a pro—without any panic or pyrotechnics.
Whether you're in charge of your safety team or just someone who’s set off the smoke alarm a few too many times, this episode is packed with helpful tips and relatable stories. We'll talk about how to avoid common mistakes, how to handle a fire extinguisher, and there will definitely be a few laughs at our own expense. Don’t miss out — this one’s bound to spark some important takeaways!
Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.
What's happening? It's your boy, jimmy, with another Life and Safety podcast, and, of course, I'm here with your girl, meg. Hello, there it is. I was waiting for the hi Wake up, meg.
Megan:I never know. Like sometimes you pause and wait for me to say something and then there's that awkward pause, but then sometimes you just continue on with like what the topic's gonna be and I never know which one it's gonna be. And then I'm like do I do? I say, do I not? And then and then it usually ends up with me just awkwardly being silent.
Jimmy:So we're rambling like now yeah, one of the two all good, we gotta figure this out. Like we can't our starts are always so weird. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out.
Megan:We'll figure it out.
Jimmy:Maybe I think we should leave this in too, by the way. Yes, probably, megan. It's the final choice. She is the editor, so we'll see.
Megan:Don't say that I'm.
Jimmy:So we're going to talk about fire extinguishers today. Great tool to have at the house. Highly recommend it. Now I get this question quite a bit when the two I guess I should say it this way the two questions I always get is should I have one in my house? Yes, absolutely have a fire extinguisher in your house. Should I have one in my car? Meh, absolutely have a fire extinguisher in your house. You should have one in my car, meh, the car one. You know a lot of the newer cars don't catch on fire like the older cars do, but you should. I mean, if you're race cars, things like that, you should definitely have a fire extinguisher.
Jimmy:If you have one in your car, the biggest problem is where do you latch it down at and where do you store it without it going off in your car? And there's lots of stories of pins falling out and them going off. We actually had an instructor here who kept fire extinguishers in her trunk after a class and she was driving from livermore to here, san jose, to our base, and hit a bump and apparently the pin fell out of the fire extinguisher when we're. She was using a powder fire extinguisher and it went off and just blasted their trunk with dry fire chemical, the dust and then it like seeped out behind her seats so like it went into her cab. A little bit of her car, oh no, and when she got here she said she had to roll the windows down because it would blow all the smoke out, which was smart, but it just the sides of her car was covered in fire extinguisher powder.
Megan:The back seat was dead.
Jimmy:She didn't want to, you know, open up her trunk. So I happened to be here getting ready to leave for another class and you know, me and the owner at the time, dave, grabbed it and we just kind of opened up the trunk for her and it was just a mess. It looked like two or three fire extinguishers went off. There was like enough powder in the back of her car to, like you can like splash and like make snow angels, and probably it was so gnarly um and now we have water runs and now we use water fire extinguishers, which we've it had.
Jimmy:Those have gone off in cars, but it's water, so it's not as bad, so to speak.
Megan:Um so, and another reason why. Um like if a tesla fire, tesla car fire were to go fiery. Oh, words are failing today, but a regular abc fire extinguisher isn't going to do too much for a Tesla that's fully engulfed. Well, it's not going to One fire extinguisher isn't going to do anything for any car that's fully engulfed Well you've got to kind of think about what do you consider fully engulfed right If it's the engine compartment?
Jimmy:The entirety of the car Well, you're not going to be able to fight that fire anyway. It's just going to be too big To your point. One fire signature is not going to work right. Tesla fires lithium battery fires. Basically, there is an argument to this. So lithium batteries, when they escape, they're a chemical reaction, you know, and that creates heat Just like any fire, but it's more of a chemical reaction, though. And then it heats up and it catches a fire, and then everything else catches fire around the battery.
Jimmy:Okay, I know there's tesla engineers and people out there right now that are just freaking out on my explanation. I'm sorry I oversimplified it. Um, yeah, you'll get over it. So, with that being said, the biggest thing if a Tesla catches fire, or any electric car catches fire, is to get out and get away from it. Teslas have special handles when the batteries go out, and I strongly suggest you look up what your model Tesla has to get out. Yeah, because there are some hidden in the back seat. They're either in the door panels or they're actually underneath your seat. In the front seats they're usually at the very front of your armrest. You can pull that off or just lift it up and it'll open. So all the models are a little different now, the newer models so just be prepared and look into that. Window brakes are always good for your keychains. I know a lot of people carry those on their keychains or in their cars.
Jimmy:Now back to home use. I guess I should finish the thought with the cars. If you have a fire extinguisher in your car, I think it's awesome. You're not going to probably be able to deploy it for your car. You're going to probably deploy it for somebody else's car and just think about how you mount it and just be aware they're definitely hard.
Megan:And I remember you telling me if you were to put out a car, fire, go diagonally.
Jimmy:Yeah, don't stand right next to the tires, because the tires are the ones that pop and explode, if you will. Uh-uh, and old school cars, like older cars with hydraulic bumper systems. They would explode and like kneecap you Oof, yeah. So there's lots of YouTube videos of that out there. Mm-hmm, if you want to see firefighters just get kneecapped or launched into the air, I don't know that.
Jimmy:I want to see that yeah yeah, you know, I'm sure there's somebody in our audience that's gonna go and look at that right. With that being said, you know, awesome, if you want to use a fire extinguisher on a car, go for it. You know, just be careful where you attack. You know, attack from the corners diagonally. Um, to protect yourself, try to do it on the side, away from the street. Don't stand on the traffic to fight the fire yeah right, it's a good one.
Jimmy:Yeah, at home, I recommend, uh, one in your garage, if that's applicable, and one underneath your sink, if that's applicable, and then one in your master bedroom where you sleep. And the reason why I say that is because, if you know let's say you had a long day you left a pan that's dirty in the oven or something dripped in the oven and it catches fire. You know, you thought you went to bed and you turned everything off. It happens to the best of us and your alarm goes off. You may not be able to get to your sink, you may not be able to get to your garage. So if you have one in your bedroom, you can take it to the fire with you.
Megan:Yeah.
Jimmy:Or if you don't fuck over with your bedroom closet, maybe like in a hall closet or something like that, mm-hmm, if you're going to use a fire extinguisher or buy one for your house the ones you get at Costco and other box stores they do work. I've never seen them work personally. We used to when we did a lot of the powder fire extinguishers, stuff like that. We'd ask people if you wanted to bring them. You could try it just to see if it worked. And a lot of the times they expire, you know, because they're only good for X amount of years and you know. Think about how long ago you bought that and stuck it underneath your desk or underneath your sink, excuse me and how long was it on the shelf before you bought it.
Megan:Yeah, Right or in the warehouse.
Jimmy:How long was it on the shelf before you bought it? Yeah, or in the warehouse. So just be really cautious of those. I tell people all the time to buy a commercial fire extinguisher if you can afford it. They're a little bit more money, but you pay every year like $10 or whatever. It is $12. And you have them inspected and they're good to go, yeah Right.
Megan:So somebody comes out and fire service comes out and does it.
Jimmy:And your fire extinguisher works. It's kind of guaranteed. That's what they do at work at the businesses and stuff like that. So the three most common mistakes when people use fire extinguishers is they stand too close to the fire, they forget to pull the pin or they grab the wrong type of fire extinguisher. We it's engineered now where it's really hard to grab the wrong type of fire extinguisher. They're all abc fire extinguishers, unless you're working a metal shop or tesla's or something like that, and they have d fire extinguishers for those. But for today we're going to talk about that ABC fire extinguisher. So an A fire extinguisher is, or an A fire is anything that leaves an ash. So wood barrel, plastic or wood barrel not barrel wood, paper, plastic.
Megan:I was thinking of the next one. That's the next one. I was thinking of the next one.
Jimmy:So anything with water can. Let's think of the next one. So anything with water can put out right A fire extinguisher Anything with ash.
Megan:A B fire. That's where barrel comes in.
Jimmy:That's where barrel comes from, man. It's been a hard day recording today. Words are now hard for me, Meg Thanks.
Megan:Pass that on. You're welcome. Yep, yep. Words are now hard for me.
Jimmy:Meg, thanks, pass that on. You're welcome. Yep, yep. Now. Anything that shoves up in a barrel gasoline diesel fuel, right any flammable liquid you're gonna use a b fire extinguisher. Most common is that dry chem uh c fire extinguisher is anything with current in it, right electrical, so you're gonna use dry cam or a gas fire extinguisher. What I mean by that is like CO2.
Megan:Yeah.
Jimmy:Okay, Cold gas Now let's kind of bring that back home. So how do we put out a grease fire on our stove?
Megan:By killing the oxygen.
Jimmy:I like it, I like it. So the first thing you always want to do is turn off the range.
Megan:Yeah, okay, right.
Jimmy:We didn't talk about that part yet. We haven't talked about that part, so you're okay. But yes, we want to get rid of the oxygen. Remove the heat source right, turn it off, all those things, so you turn it off, and then how do we remove that oxygen right? So lids, yeah.
Megan:Like if the fire is contained within the pan. Put the lid on.
Jimmy:Yep, absolutely, absolutely what not to do. So don't throw water on it. Right Water and grease don't mix. That's really bad.
Jimmy:Well, they mix but they create more fire. Yeah, that's gonna happen. The water, the grease vaporizes, right, because it gets splashed and then it gets all over the place. It just makes a bigger, huge fireball. It's cool to see, but not in your house. Yeah, you know, there's a good YouTube video out there made by Mythbusters. Go check that out. What happens is so. Another thing you can do is, you know, baking soda, baking powder, works really good.
Jimmy:I need a lot of that though A lot of baking powder, it works better than salt and flour, right? So if you use salt and you salt bay it, you're just gonna get really cool sparkles. You know, um, you want to use like all of the salt, like all five pounds of the big giant morton salt thing. Um, if you just use like a handful of flour, you're gonna look like you're traveling through the flu network from Harry Potter.
Megan:You're like.
Jimmy:Daiguan Eli right, it's going to flop all over the place and it's going to be this huge flame. So you don't want to use a handful, you want to use all of the flour, like the big five-pound bag of flour. If not, it just you know, sparkles and catches fire.
Megan:Creates more flame.
Jimmy:It creates more flame. So don't do that Now, because the way those work is we're saturating it right. We're not just throwing a little bit of fuel on a big fire, we're saturating the fire, A dishrag. As long as you wet it and wring it out, that'll work. Fire blankets work really good. You can buy a fire blanket for fairly cheap off the interwebs.
Megan:We have one of those at my house.
Jimmy:It's hanging on the cabinet in our kitchen. That makes a lot of sense. I've seen you cook, I've heard your stories.
Megan:Yeah, yeah one of those stories is that the fire alarm in our house went off like every day for like a week and I eventually brought it in and I was like Jimmy, help me fix it. And he was like it's dusty. So fun fact if your fire alarm keeps going off for no particular reason, it might be dusty, so dust it off.
Jimmy:Yeah, keep them clean. The old Swifter duster works amazing to keep those things running. Or it might have expired and, to be fair, I think yours was actually more expired than dusty, right, and then I think your parents went yours was actually more expired than dusty, right, and then I think your parents went out and bought another one, yeah, and that also corrected the problem. Yeah so, fire extinguishers do expire, okay so we have ash barrel current.
Jimmy:Another thing not to do is carry that fire outside. Don't put it in your breezeway, outside your condo, on your front steps don't dump it out the window.
Jimmy:Yeah, don't try to throw it out, the back sliding glass door. Um, that's not good. Not good usually if you throw it out and it, you know, sets off, your you know set your deck on fire, or your you know your pool deck on fire or whatever it is out there. That's bad. That's bad. Actually. Responded to a house. The dog lives.
Jimmy:I hate this story. I know you hate this story, but a person threw their grease out there and started the poor dog on fire. The dog ran around and started a five-acre forest fire. When we got there, the dog was, you know, doing the right thing was stop, drop and roll, and he was rolling around putting the fire out on himself, and then we cooled it off and and then we fought the fire. And then we called the owner lots of names and told him he was really dumb. So don't do that, don't that? Don't carry it out to your driveway either. Okay, turn it off, smother it, walk away. Okay, call 911. The guys will come out and take a look at it. Make sure it's good. You know, don't ever be afraid to call 911. Even if you think it's out. Hey, call 911.
Megan:Yeah, be afraid to call 911. Even if you think it's out, call 911. Yeah, one of the big cautionary tales that you hear, or at least that I hear, is that the fire goes into the walls so you don't see it, and then it's too late it's in the walls.
Jimmy:Yep. So yeah, if it gets in the walls, things like that, it's hard to do. You gotta have smoke and you gotta have holes in the walls, things like that. But it usually goes up to the through the vent and then it will maybe escape from the vent. Think of your, like your hood, you know, the fan going off and it escapes out of that. Um, I was home from the fire season way back when, when I was a seasonal and I was at my parents' house visiting and I heard somebody yelling. My folks were living in a townhouse at the time and somebody in the complex I heard yelling, you know there's a fire.
Jimmy:There's a fire, help, help, help. And I ran in. You know I had my cape on, so I ran into the house, the apartment, townhouse, whatever it was, and the ladies panic, caught fire, but they had like a weird decoration on the back of it, like their backs like backsplash. I think it was like to catch the actual grease.
Megan:Like on the back of the stove, yeah exactly it was.
Jimmy:I don't know, it was weird, but that caught on fire. So I took the pan off the stove and moved it over and that caught fire. And then I just was like I needed water at that point. So she had another pot with boiling water and I just threw that onto it and then I threw like six or seven pots of water on it and just flooded her kitchen. But I got the fire out. It was crazy.
Jimmy:And then when the fire department got there and I was like I could still smell something and I didn't know if it was like the weird like decoration thing in the back and I could still feel the heat. It was just really weird and my spidey sense was up. And then the fire department got there and I was like, hey, I think I got it out, but I can still smell something. And they're like, all right, we got this. And they actually opened up the cupboard above and there was fire in the vent Because the vent had grease in it. So it started that. And then it was in the cupboards, and so it started that and then it was in the cupboards and it was going up the wall. So that was pretty interesting. I was like, oh shit, excuse my language, but I was like uh-oh, and then I backed out and the guys had to use their fire hose and it became a thing.
Megan:Flood the kitchen even more. Yeah.
Jimmy:Yeah, I mean it is the best job. I mean it's the only job in the world where you can go to somebody's house and cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage and then thank you for it. So to use a fire extinguisher remember the PASS acronym pull, aim, squeeze and sweep we want to stand about six to eight feet away, depending on how big your fire extinguisher is. Look at your fire extinguisher. There's a big white sticker on there. Usually that'll tell you exactly how far away, because to stand you can care at least the range of the fire extinguisher. Um, I always tell people in my class if you're standing close to it and you feel the heat or you start to feel like your hands, the hair on your back of your hand, singe off, you're probably standing too close Back up back up.
Megan:Yeah, I will say, the first time that I learned how to use a fire extinguisher or at least I had like read about it and seen videos but I didn't process how far away you have to stand until I did it here for the first time with our like fire thing and it feels farther away than you should be. I feel like like the first time I was like really this far away. But um, you know, ideally you want safety first.
Jimmy:If I remember right, didn't the wind change on us and like we got a little warm.
Megan:Probably.
Jimmy:Yeah, yeah.
Megan:That sounds familiar yeah.
Jimmy:Yeah, I thought that was with you and I was like ow, it's getting warm, you need to put the fire out.
Megan:Was that you? I forgot it was you. No, I think that was a student.
Jimmy:Oh, it was that same class on the same day. That's what it was. That's what it was, yeah, yeah. So 68 feet away, you know, or, depending on your fire, how small or big it is. And then remember the PASS acronym Pull the pin, pull the pin, pull the pin. Don't throw the fire extinguisher, it's not a grenade and that only works in movies. Okay, aim at the base of the fire, squeeze and sweep.
Megan:Squeeze the handle, squeeze the handle.
Jimmy:Squeeze the handle. Don't squeeze the fire extinguisher. It's not a squishy toy. The eyeballs aren't going to pop out. Okay, Squeeze the handle and sweep side to side. And make sure you look at our newsletter that goes along with this podcast. That's going to be. You're going to have some nice good tips in it also. No-transcript.
