What would happen if the gas pumps at a gas station exploded?
I ask because I work in a gas station, and sometimes I wonder. Would we be injured? The pumps are a decent distance from entrance, maybe 3 to 4 car lengths away.
If they all blew up, how bad would it be for us inside the building?
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What a good question. I also am wondering about that. Why don’t you make it happen manually?
It wouldn’t be as bad as you think, unless the pump was actually pumping fuel at the time the fire happened.
If the pump was off and a fire started the only fuel would be what was in the hose and the pump itself.
If the pump was pumping fuel it would be one hell of a fire but I doubt it would blow like you see in the movies.
I guess “exploded” wasn’t the right word, it’s not like it is in movies. It just burns
@SQUEEKY2 Yeah, I phrased it weird. Still a scary thought though, people can be so dumb by smoking at the pumps. But even little things like static shock can do bad things too.
I know the actual nozzles have an automatic release, so when people drive off with it still in their car it just comes off and doesn’t spill any gas, so that helps that issue.
@Nuralii1i ”What a good question, I also am wondering about that, why don’t you make it happen manually?” Yeah sure, I’ll get right on that lol. (What a weird response)
There is a large safety shut off in a convenient location, probably just outside the door. If you haven’t been shown where it is, you were not trained properly.
@YARNLADY, it’s a button on registers too, but that’s an obvious thing to do
New gas stations that have a cover have built-in sprinklers that would go automatically. If you look up, you’d see these six inch black things hanging down every few feet.
Not much. The pump itself doesn’t have that much gas. It is the tank that you need to worry about, and the hose coming from the pump.
I’m hoping health and safety measures in the US are more stringent than in Russia
It couldn’t happen. To explode the pumps would have to have a mixture of air and fuel and a point of ignition, which they don’t. The fuel is in a closed environment with no air, so it can’t burn. If there was some kind of an explosion, if it could happen, it would be very small.
If a person struck a spark near the fuel filler on the car, and the tank was empty, the tank could rupture and create a explosion of sorts. Probably short lived since the fuel vapor burns so quickly. (And the gas tank on most cars is less than 15 gallons.) If the tank was full there would only be a short blast of flame from the tank, then the fire would go out since all oxygen in the filler pipe would be exhausted.
There are either Halon or CO2 fire suppression systems located above the pumps. Take a look. They look like small coke bottles on the end of some hard pipe above the tank.
They will trigger in a fraction of a second.
Halon works great but was banned a while ago due to ozone depletion. We had it in our fuels laboratories and it was amazing!
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