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Parent Category: Safety Info Posts

Category: Hazardous Materials

Published: 04 December 2014

News reports of disasters often quote witnesses who said they heard some sort of explosion connected to the event. While deaths, injuries and damage resulting from explosions are devastating in every way, there are distinctions in the model fire codes among explosion types.  In general, an explosion is the rapid and violent expansion of gases, which may include a shock wave, that can disrupt materials and enclosures in the vicinity. Explosions can result from chemical changes (such as rapid oxidation), physical changes (such as catastrophic failure of pressure vessels), or atomic changes (nuclear fission or fusion).  The model codes differentiate between two types of explosions based on the shock wave travel speed.

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