National news has been so overwhelming the past couple of
weeks it's been difficult to pick out a single subject to write about. Then the
other day something happened that was more down to earth and personal, a minor
observation at a gas station where one man's inconsideration and unsafe actions
could have killed us all.
In working on boats I quickly learned the safety precautions
necessary when fueling, having read about several and seen one boat blow up from
lack of such care.
So, I followed a guy into a gas station the other day and
where people are asked to pull ahead to the open pump, this guy stopped at the
first one and I had to maneuver around him with a trailer to get to the one in
front of him. That was the inconsiderate act.
But that was just impolite, the next two were far more
dangerous. First, he put the nozzle into the filler pipe on his car, set the
switch to full and walked away, went into the attached store for something
leaving the pump unattended. This is the first safety no-no. Even with
automatic shutoffs and splash guards, so much can go wrong no one should ever
leave gas flowing without someone watching.
Then he came back from the store and without even looking at
the operation opened the door and sat inside the car waiting for the pump to
shut off. When it did, he got out of the car and pulled the nozzle out of the
filler hole. Then he tapped the metal nozzle on the metal filler pipe several times to shake out any excess gasoline that might have spilled on his car. Does
anyone know what can happen when you strike metal against metal?
If you can't guess, I will tell you: SPARKS! All it would
have taken was one little spark caused by that tapping and the car and possibly
the whole place could have gone up. In that situation there is also the danger
of static electricity buildup creating the spark that leads to fire as in the
attached video. It has happened before and probably will again.
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