Dear readers,

After so much training throughout my career (hazardous atmosphere, confined spaces, and many others), I can't help but keep fixed in my mind some images I'd prefer not to remember. Yes, I have a vivid imagination, and that works against me.

Even in these times where analgesics are easy to find, suffering burns in a large area of the body is an awful way to get hurt.

The scary part about this is that we are exposed to such potentially life-threatening situations even in simple tasks, like if we are only working in our car or close to some large pot with boiling water, or a cauldron with melted fat over a stove or firepit. Modern cars use very flammable fuel mixtures with components that, at ambient temperature, start to vaporize. It's easy for such mixtures to escape through some opening in our engine bay, and with a broken cable or even with the same sparks of the starter, if there is a considerable leak, our engine can catch on fire. There are means to prevent the damage here; installing some heat insulation under the bonnet itself and a blanket of suitable fireproof material means that (probably) some fire that starts underneath could burn and extinguish itself quickly because of the lack of oxygen. Car safety instructors have always informed us that we must NOT open the bonnet if there is a certain indication of fire.

An unfortunate tale

This advice, sadly, was not followed by one of my neighbors. I hardly met the guy, but it was shocking to learn how he died, indeed.

A friend called him (he knew a little about mechanics) to get some assistance with a car that had some combustion problems, and when they were doing a road test, the engine went ablaze. They jumped out of the car…and opened the bonnet.