Having been trained in shipboard firefighting as a young Sailor on board USS Nimitz, I'm thinking it wasn't the gas that warped the steel in that overpass, but the use of AFFF (aqueous film forming foam) that's used to put fuel fires out. That shit is highly toxic and corrosive to metals.
We used AFFF to cl an off the various oily chemicals that leak onto th flight deck. Once a month we would have a no fly day and clean the deck using AFFF because it's an excellent degreaser. HOWEVER, it's highly corrosive to metal, so when we were done degreasing th deck, we would then spray potable water to wash off any remaining AFFF so it didn't corrupt and corrode the very surface we launch and recover planes on.
I remember there was one instance when we had a plane whose main gear (the nose landing gear) didn't extend. The plane carrying live ordnance and had about half of it's fuel left. When it landed, the crash crew immediately sprayed AFFF to ensure there wouldn't be any random sparks to light off any potential leaks. Once we were done removing the cockpit flight recorder and radar computers, we dumped the plane over board, as AFFF will eat electrical wiring and even composite metals we use on our fighter jets. The plane was deemed completely unsalvageable due to th use of AFFF. The shit is that corrosive.
So, after reading this article, I'm sure it is wasn't the burning fuel that doomed the overpass, as much as it was the use of AFFF to out out a 8500 gal gas fire.
Having been trained in shipboard firefighting as a young Sailor on board USS Nimitz, I'm thinking it wasn't the gas that warped the steel in that overpass, but the use of AFFF (aqueous film forming foam) that's used to put fuel fires out. That shit is highly toxic and corrosive to metals.
We used AFFF to cl an off the various oily chemicals that leak onto th flight deck. Once a month we would have a no fly day and clean the deck using AFFF because it's an excellent degreaser. HOWEVER, it's highly corrosive to metal, so when we were done degreasing th deck, we would then spray potable water to wash off any remaining AFFF so it didn't corrupt and corrode the very surface we launch and recover planes on.
I remember there was one instance when we had a plane whose main gear (the nose landing gear) didn't extend. The plane carrying live ordnance and had about half of it's fuel left. When it landed, the crash crew immediately sprayed AFFF to ensure there wouldn't be any random sparks to light off any potential leaks. Once we were done removing the cockpit flight recorder and radar computers, we dumped the plane over board, as AFFF will eat electrical wiring and even composite metals we use on our fighter jets. The plane was deemed completely unsalvageable due to th use of AFFF. The shit is that corrosive.
So, after reading this article, I'm sure it is wasn't the burning fuel that doomed the overpass, as much as it was the use of AFFF to out out a 8500 gal gas fire.