Auto Air Bag Fire?

[J T Whidby]

Have an of you experienced, or know of others who have, air bag deployment resultings in fire.

My department, Circle Five Volunteer fire Departmet, Canton, GA Use, responded to a MVA involving car vs. deer last date. Up on arrival the '96 or '97 Mercury Cougar had an under dash fire behind the passenger side deployed air bag.

The vehicle damage was really minor, but the fire and the deployed air bags made for a "total"

In the past I have had victims tell me "there was a fire" but this is first one that was on fire when we arrived.

If you have knowledge or experience of "air bag deployment fires" please share that information.

J. T. Whidby

[ff emt-p bleve]

hey recall having a air bag fire in two vehicle head- on. Done very little fire damage.heavy damage from the accident.Bag had deployed and was burning/smoldering.The fire seemed to orgin with the bag itself.

[Boots]

Our department has responded to several auto accidents that the air bags had deployed and we found several smoldering spots on them. One incident we found a small smoldering fire a long time after bags had deployed. We now take time and check folds in the bags to make sure we do not have hidden fires.Flame spread was very slow in these cases.

[resqb]

Same answer as the others. We get smoke from alot of them. I've only seen one burn in the past year. Noticed it still smoldering 20 minutes after arrival. pulled PW over and gave it a couple of small bursts. Them we cut the bag out with a pocket knife. Nothing big, but an eye opener none the less.

[Ron Shaw]

There are high temperatures associated with airbag deployments, especially with the passenger's frontal.

During the NHTSA Filming in Dallas, I photographed Ron Moore checking the temperature of the inflator with a Ratek meter. The photo shows a temp of 731 degrees F. This was after several minutes, as it took some time to cut through the kevlar airbag.

One word of caution, don't try to push the airbag back into the box. The burnable material inside the unit will now come in contact with the hot inflator and this is where you could actually have the smoldering or cause a fire.

One word of caution, where all your PPE, undeployed airbags have failed under fire conditions and cause shrapnel to go through the roof of the vehicles. The DOT has home videos of incidents where this occured. So it has been documented.

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Ron Shaw
http://www.extrication.com