Fire at Michigan State Champs

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by Jaci

I hate to be 'that person', but it has to be said.

Why did it take so long to grab a fire extinguisher that should have been ready at the field?
Why is there a group of volunteers all standing around a robot with a roaring fire and a live battery inside it?
Why are there volunteers sticking their hands inside and/or near the robot, let alone fanning the fire?

It seems to me like this reflects a lack of training for what to do in this situation. I would expect volunteers to be properly inducted about what to do in the event of an emergency such as this one. We've got 6 highly dangerous machines on the field and dozens more behind the curtain, all with massive batteries and electrical currents running through them, but it seems that no one knows what to do in the (quite likely) event that something goes wrong.

We're always saying that "Safety comes first", but it's events like this that make me question "are we really living up to that?"

Training for an emergency and being in one feel completely different.

I don't believe you can fault volunteers who aren't exactly sure what to do when they go to maybe 3-4 events a year. If they were trained for an emergency like this the chances of this happening has to be close to 1 in 100 events. So it isn't like this is something that happens so often that they would know how to react if it did.

I do agree there should be a fire estinguisher at the field to be easily found. And that perhaps maybe they shouldn't have been standing so close to a fire.

What are your concerns with a battery and fire?