Screaming Alpha

There are different classes of fires. You have seen the markings on the fire extinguisher A B C, they all stand for a different type of fire. Well when a person is on fire, it is a class A fire. Using the phonetic alphabet, you get an Alpha for that class. Not to many just stand there and burn, they run, they scream, and they flail about. Hence, Screaming Alpha. When I was in the military, I served on a fire team on board ship. I have seen screaming alphas, and it is not pretty or a joke. When we would get a call for a screaming alpha, we would move just that much faster to assist. We never took that type of call lightly.

Why would I possibly bring this up? It has happened here. Much to our dismay. Hind sight is always 20/20, and in this case we would have all liked it if the person in question had stopped to tell someone that they did not know what they were doing. The result was a screaming alpha. How did it happen? Electricity. We have a current potential at this site that is rivalled only by the power company. Granted there are places that have a large current potential, but they are not out in the open, like the power company or our site.

When you disregard safety and the electrical potential, you have a good chance of becoming a crispy critter. Having a current potential that we have, you can vaporize metal in a second. Vaporize metal? Yes, metal can vaporize if exposed to enough heat in a very short period of time. Just think plasma cutter, but on a bigger scale. How big? Basically, take a 1 inch box end wrench and make it disappear in a cloud of blue flame (the whole thing).

This is what happened to our careless person. Not only did the metal vaporize, but their clothes caught on fire, as did the cabinet the metal was in. It resulted in 3rd degree burns over a large portion of their body.

They came back to work (I don't understand why the company wanted them back). You would think that after a traumatizing incident that they would be more careful, but they are not. This person has been involved is several other incidents (not of the same type) since being back, and is now the head of the safety committee. Now isn't that strange!