Talk:Fire class

References re NFPA 10, 1001
Refrences to validate the content should include NFPA 10 and NFPA 1001. Chief Dixon (talk) 16:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC) PLEASE NOTE EXCEPT FOR SOME CRITICAL APPLICATIONS HALON 1301 & 1211 IS BANNED GLOBALLY BY COUNTRIES THAT RATIFIED THE MONTREAL PROTOCOL, THE KYOTO AGREEMENT, THE PARIS ACCORD & THE KIGALI AMENDMENT TO THE MONTREAL PROTOCOL AND SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THIS PAGE AS A VIABLE FIRE EXTINGUISHING AGENT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C5:F011:3500:8917:66C:2541:6C4 (talk) 09:53, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Fire classes in Europe
Im actually working on a training unit for voluntary firefighter trainees about fire extinguishers. As I am a German firefighter I do have to work with european standards. European "EN2" knows five fire classes:
 * A: solid materials
 * B: liquid or melting materials
 * C: gas
 * D: metal
 * F: oil or fat

e.g.: a candle belongs to class B because it will melt after lighting it. Class E has been deleted (it's been a while...) because it is part of class A as there are always some solid materials on fire (electrical power does not burn!). According to this schema class F would originally belong to class B, it has been seperated because class F fire desire different extinguishing agents. BTW: IMO lighter affiliate to class C ;-) Greetings from Germany --91.97.89.5 19:15, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Class A & K
A lighter is not a class A fire because the fuel being combusted is a liquied or a gas not a solid.

Class K is a European classification for grease fire, the American classification for this kind of fire would be Class E.


 * Class E? i'm fairly positive that cooking oil falls under flammable liquid. I'm currently out of the country so i don't have access to any NIOSH manuals to back up my suspicion. anyone wanna fact check here? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shaggorama (talk • contribs).

Class K is a little known US classification. A lighter (without fuel) is a Class A classification. The fuel inside is a Class B classification.DFurtman (talk) 09:01, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Class K
 * Class F
 * }

--Alx xlA 00:24, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

chart looks just fine as it is.. no need to introduce it, it does itself. DFurtman (talk) 08:58, 16 April 2008 (UTC) well the chat the wiki brings up is wrong in australia a flammable liquid fire is a class B not a class M as it says — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.169.222.205 (talk) 06:27, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Classes
In 1997 I was an intern at one of the U.S. National Laboratories. During orientation we had a safety seminar, and the instructor gave us this way to remember the most common U.S. fire classes (which I still remember):

TR A SH LU B RICANTS

ELE C TRICAL Jimpoz (talk) 06:59, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Fire extinguisher also suggests "A = Ash" (burns to ash), "B = Barrel" (gas and liquids come in barrels/cylinders), C = Current (electrical), K = Kitchen.


 * I was taught in fire school A is around us. B can boil or blow up. C has a charge. D is detonation most metals will explode when water is put on it and K is kitchen. hope that helps Mattvoza (talk) 15:35, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

What is this the classification of?
What is this the classification of? Is it the classification of the fire? or is it the classification of the fire extinguisher? From my impression, it is only the classification of the fire extinguisher (which is based on the fuel). I am not sure if that is fully applicable to the fire itself. --Voidvector (talk) 08:11, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Both, really. The composition of a fire necessarily defines the extinguishing agents which work best against it.  The classification standards are generally driven by the need to make extinguisher selection quick and easy, certainly.  But those classifications have to be drawn up around the characteristics of fire.  So it's two sides of the same coin.  — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:29, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Focus on the fires
I've gone through and changed the focus of the section titles to the actual classes of fires, as opposed to what letters of the alphabet the standards use. Standards change over time, and vary with language and locale, but the underlying science remains the same: An electrical fire is an electrical fire, regardless of whether you call it "Class C", "Class E", or something else. I'm sure there are other classification systems in the world, some of which might not even use English language. I feel the article was getting both burdened and very confused by focusing on letters. Indeed, it is not at all clear in some cases which standard a given statement is referring to. I've marked these for clarification. Hopefully this is an improvement. — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:26, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

American
Worldwide, some people use American to mean "of the Americas" (i.e. Argentina through Canada); others use it to mean "of the United States of America". Is it safe to assume that, because no other mention of standards elsewhere in the Americas is made, the column "American" refers to the standards observed throughout all American countries (except, of course, the EU Overseas Territories, like French Guiana) 195.229.241.177 (talk) 04:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

No, sorry. The standards quoted as "American" are set by US Government agencies. E123 (talk) 15:24, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Canada?
Which fire class system does Canada use? United States or Europe? 97.75.177.149 (talk) 23:59, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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adding mention to aclass k fire extingusher
under class k fire it is mentioned that a fine mist or fire blanket is used to extinguishes it. i am planing on adding a sentence or 2 about a wet chem fire extinguisher that is designed for grease fires. it works under a saponification process. i will add it later today Mattvoza (talk) 15:10, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

More explanation on certain fire types
Ive corrected a section in the combustible materials section that called dry chemical powders just "dry powder" which as the metals sections explains, those two terms aren't interchangeable, and added in a link to a guide to fire classes in australia.

Is there any reason not to expand a little bit on some of the fire classes, is it considered outside the scope of this specific article to talk about for example how surface area of the fuel can contribute to the heat release rate/fire growth of a combustible material fire (timber log vs woodchip vs sawdust)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by PyroGrisk (talk • contribs) 04:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I have added a Wikilink to the Surface-area-to-volume ratio Wikipedia article, which explains the concept more thoroughly. Reify-tech (talk) 03:18, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Merger proposal
The Fire control article largely duplicates the content here, but it is less-developed and has scant mention of anything outside the US. I propose that its contents be merged into the Fire class article here. Comments or suggestions? Reify-tech (talk) 15:45, 24 March 2023 (UTC)


 * There might be a better solution for this; several of the citations on Fire control can be used to supplement what is written here, and not all that information really needs to be on the Fire control article. It could provide a brief introduction of different types of fire and then expand upon fire control in other sections, similar to how Spill containment doesn't extensively inform of every different possible spill but has a paragraph and link to the Oil spill article. Reconrabbit (talk) 21:28, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Closing; no merge; uncontested objection and no support. Klbrain (talk) 11:52, 16 December 2023 (UTC)