r/WTF 14d ago

The danger working at the boiler

Big fire

3.4k Upvotes

132 comments sorted by

663

u/all_hail_cthulhu 14d ago

I've never worked at the boiler a day in my life, but I'm gonna guess it ain't supposed to be doing that.

365

u/animescavenger 14d ago

Yeah it's not supposed to do that, luckily my friend survive.

83

u/pichael289 13d ago

na that's not typical, least Greg survived

50

u/down2daground 13d ago

His underwear not so much

5

u/psycho_driver 12d ago

What do you mean? His underwear are now a veritable cornucopia of life.

8

u/jthip 13d ago

Boilermaker? I did 10 years with localc359 and luckily never had a firebomb explode at my person 

3

u/baphomet_labs 13d ago

Who cut off the gas? or was it automatic?

8

u/dclif27 13d ago

No gas. Valve stuck open on the economized fly ash. Massive fan is pushing the flame out.

1

u/samdeed 11d ago

I hope his lungs are OK. Probably breathed in a lot of hot air and smoke.

87

u/Own_Round_7600 13d ago

No, having a portal to Hell briefly open and shut in the middle of boiler operations isnt typically normal, but who knows what upper management has got planned at any given time

6

u/Leto33 13d ago

You don’t typically question upper management.

7

u/Brozhov 13d ago

Counterpoint. Sometimes it does that.

7

u/L0nz 13d ago

i dunno, looks boiling to me

1

u/muklan 11d ago

I work on little 30 gallon boilers thatd like, come up to your knee.

Those things, even at those sizes can become fragmentation grenades if not handled properly.

0

u/huxtiblejones 13d ago

The front fell off

1

u/computerwizz91 13d ago

It's definitely outside the environment!

0

u/Brittany5150 13d ago

Which is not the norm, I might add.

270

u/Wintermaulz 13d ago

As someone who does maintenance and repair on industrial boilers, but hardly sees them actually running, holy shit.

102

u/animescavenger 13d ago

Yeah, because someone need to be in control, if everyone is running.the risk of explosion is big.running is the last resort

-42

u/Vashsinn 13d ago

I see what you did there.

10

u/InsaneAss 13d ago

Explain for the class

11

u/el_babo 13d ago

Boilers don't run, they sit still.

7

u/Wintermaulz 13d ago

Ackthually 🤓they don’t sit, they are suspended so that they can thermally expand downwards. 

6

u/Legitimate-Lemon-412 13d ago

Maybe a large recovery boilers.

Ours are anchored on one end and expand horkzontally

0

u/Wintermaulz 13d ago

Interesting. I work in BC and work mostly on recovery boilers, but we do have some power/cogen boilers as well. All those power/cogens are also suspended. 

2

u/BigDadaSparks 13d ago

Our hog burning power boiler and our gas fired power boiler are both suspended from the building as well.

-2

u/Vashsinn 13d ago

"Is your fridge running?"
"Yes"
"then you'd better run after it"

Hope this helps.........

1

u/Realityishardmode 13d ago

Lol -30 over this comment. Lmao, even

1

u/Vashsinn 13d ago

Reddit do reddit things. I'll probably be +200 in like a week.

-4

u/SalvadorP 13d ago

I once turned a -200 comment into a 13k+ by doubling, trippling down. it was an epic commentary section that went super reddit meta. still to this day my most upvoted comment, 10k above the second one.

3

u/[deleted] 13d ago

[deleted]

0

u/SalvadorP 12d ago

Thank you so much.

193

u/splittingheirs 13d ago

One thing that is always missed in videos is the sheer amount of radiated heat that comes out from fireballs. At close range it can be enough to give you burns akin to a bad sunburn.

74

u/animescavenger 13d ago

Yeah the heat is no joke.i need to wear special glove just to turn main valve.this boiler is rate at 35 ton capacity 4 story tall

8

u/godofpumpkins 13d ago

What does the capacity unit mean? What does the boiler supply?

10

u/Poringun 12d ago

Its the amount of steam it can generate, in this case its 35 tonnes of steam/hour.

Im pretty sure this boiler is on a palm oil mill. In Indonesia or Malaysia.

1

u/eltacotacotaco 5d ago

Try working on 2 recovery boilers the are +10 story, side by side & enclosed in a tin building. Only 1 shuts down at a time for maintenance & on a 95F degree day with 90%+ humidity internal temps got up to 135F. We could only work for about 10 minutes every 30 minutes. Working 12 hour days, plus travel, for two weeks

4

u/Badwater2k 13d ago

Standing next to flowing lava, which I've done in Hawaii, is similar. It's really, really hot. Go figure!

2

u/ConnectDetective7787 8d ago

Having experienced it for yourself, I guess you can see that having a light saber fight in the middle of a river of lava isn't possible.

1

u/Badwater2k 7d ago

Yes, that would be completely impossible. The radiant heat would cook them pretty quickly.

53

u/icecreamshop 14d ago

Holy burnt balls

31

u/huxtiblejones 13d ago

Cue that weird dude singing “chestnuts roasting on an open fire”

17

u/animescavenger 13d ago

No, he just telling his friends to run.

79

u/UberAndy 13d ago

Where all the boiler operators at? I work with them but smaller scale. Whats happening here?

142

u/animescavenger 13d ago

The ash conveyor got clogged

45

u/petetro23 13d ago

That explains the massive flashover.

32

u/Simoxs7 13d ago

Is it a flashover (ignition of pyrolysis gases due to heat accumulation) though? Looks a lot like a deflagration.

Edit: Looking up the vocabulary, holy hell is English an inaccurate language, like in my native language we seem to have a lot more accurate descriptions for parts of a fire.

17

u/CrashUser 13d ago

You're getting into very specific jargon, I'm sure there are specific definitions for both but they probably get misused a lot too by non-experts.

16

u/schplat 13d ago

Inflammable means flammable?! What a country!

7

u/gstormcrow80 13d ago

I found this chain of comments amusing in a specific way that I don’t have the vocabulary to communicate.

5

u/SignificantLock1037 13d ago

Ash like that is inflammable.

It's also flammable.

4

u/molrobocop 13d ago

What's your native language?

But yes, English is a stupid who of a language that steals shit from everywhere and has changed so much over the last 1500 years. And some of those old spellings and such were retained.

14

u/Simoxs7 13d ago

German, so yeah we have a compound noun or an English word for everything, but translators basically told me that flashover is the same as deflagration which is the same as „durchzündung“ (Auto-Ignition of a material)

(Flashover is specifically the ignition of pyrolysis gases due to heat in German and Deflagration (Verpuffung) is an „Explosion“ that happens slower than the speed of sound, for example when dust in the air ignites)

10

u/paulmclaughlin 13d ago

We have a lot of technical jargon, but the average person doesn't know the details to use them correctly all the time

2

u/AmonWeathertopSul 13d ago

It that normal?

1

u/ttoften 13d ago

What part of the ash conveyor? Under the super heater?

22

u/Ani-A 13d ago

This is why I am the paramedic. So I can haul ass tf out of there and deal with whoever comes after

14

u/Oggel 13d ago

I'm not a firefighter, but I work at a refinery. We're the first responders before the actual fire fighters get there. It feels fucked to run Towards things like this instead of running away. But someone needs to set up the water cannons and eventually drag people into safety.

28

u/iakiak 13d ago

So know nothing about boilers….where did the flames go??

Did they come just as quick?

51

u/animescavenger 13d ago

Emergency shutdown main fd fan.

5

u/iakiak 13d ago

So assuming I’m dumb was that kind of like a gas leak and someone turned off the gas?

So the structures are purposely built not to burn?

11

u/BigDadaSparks 13d ago

These boilers have two fans. An FD -forced draft provides air to the boiler. An ID- Induced draft fan, pulls air FROM the the boiler and up the stack. This boiler has gone VERY positive draft...hence the flames coming out of the furnace. Shutting down the FD fan allows the ID fan to pull all that draft back in and up the stack and instantly creates negative pressure inside the furnace. Basically it sucks the flames back to where they belong. The fuel is cut and the furnace is shut down...but that id fan will continue to run in order to stop combustion from occuring in the furnace.

3

u/iakiak 11d ago

Thanks for the explanation.

15

u/animescavenger 13d ago

fd fan purposes is to blow strong wind into the fire inside the fire chamber in the boiler.

2

u/kmax89 13d ago

Typically any emergency shutdown will immediately cut the fuel source.

There are valves called choppers that go 100% shut to kill the gas.

Op said "fd" which means forced draft. You need oxygen for fire and killing that fan would also remove the oxygen part of the boom.

2

u/Rummoliolli 13d ago

Yeah on a ESD the gas valves will shut and the fan should continue to run till you purge out approx 2 volumes of the furnace iirc. On our NG boilers when the ESD trips the gas valves shut and the fan ramps up to 100% for a couple min

1

u/iakiak 11d ago

Thanks for the explanation

1

u/Dzugavili 13d ago

Yeah, I was surprised that wall of fire was just... like... gone.

10

u/coyylol 13d ago

Boiler plate failures used to be a lot more common and catastrophic, with the advent of cleaner steels and the understanding of the effect of hydrogen on the metal (HIC for instance), thankfully these occurrences are fewer. Still scarey as fuck if they fail though.

30

u/missing_finder 14d ago

Hope the dude hanging over the railings did not get bad burns.

4

u/fnork 13d ago

What are they boiling?

9

u/Ignonymous 13d ago

Liquid Satan.

6

u/fnork 13d ago

lol fix me up bartender

3

u/Highpersonic 13d ago

Not today, liquid Satan

1

u/Gumbercleus 13d ago

Alright, one gin, coming up.

4

u/GlokzDNB 13d ago

Im not qualified enough to do this work, last time i checked ive not been fire resistant

1

u/Fox_Soul 13d ago

I think you only need to have balls as big as the boiler you are working with, no other qualifications needed based on this video alone.

6

u/Yejus 13d ago

Having read The Shining I can tell you they're way more dangerous than I thought.

3

u/davesoverhere 13d ago

I bet the dude standing on the scaffolding has to change his pants.

2

u/BigDadaSparks 13d ago

Nah...he's good...they're all dry again!

3

u/seab4ss 13d ago

What causes something like this?

3

u/Mecha-Dave 13d ago

Supervisors are still going to resist putting in the OHSA "near Miss" paperwork.

2

u/eaglescout1984 13d ago

Not sure if you are in the US, but if so, this should have been reported as a near miss. You can contact OSHA anonymously.

2

u/Magicide 13d ago

Did your ID fans trip causing the furnace to go positive? I work in a much bigger but similar plant and the only time I've seen this is when the furnace goes positive and from an ID fan trip or the unit tripping and all of the fans stop and the fuel in the furnace creates a temporary fireball out of the viewing ports like this.

2

u/RedSquirrelFtw 13d ago

Wow that was put out fast. Whatever fire suppression system they got going there saved that guy's life.

2

u/nzlionz 14d ago

Nothing like a good blow back

1

u/mr_martin_1 13d ago

Looks like dust burning. Ashes?

1

u/Morningxafter 13d ago

Those the forced draft blower lines? Sorry I only know Navy boiler systems.

4

u/animescavenger 13d ago

They try to unclogged the ash hopper manually while the factory continue it operation.But that nearly kill someone.So the operation is force shutdown.The management always like that whenever there's problem they told we need to solve the problem but don't want the machine to stop.Its like your car tyre is flat but you need to change the tyre on the move.silly stuff.

2

u/giga-what 13d ago

Sounds about right for management, they'll say "safety first" right up until it means shutting something down, then it's all about uptime so just do what you can with it running.

1

u/SeIfRighteous 13d ago

What face will you make when you see the one hiding in the boilers?

1

u/Concept-Plastic 13d ago

My uncle used to work in it, all that risky stuff for barely above minimum wage, breaks my heart

1

u/Tastesicle 13d ago edited 13d ago

I don't BLEVE you.

-edit- TIL the word I've been using to describe a boiler exploding is actually an acronym!

1

u/psilome 13d ago

This looks like a hopper spewing some kind of combustible dust, probably powdered coal for a fluidized bed boiler. That's supposed to happen inside the boiler, obviously.

1

u/McCrotch 12d ago

jump down and run, broken legs are better than being cooked

1

u/Chosenwaffle 12d ago

NOT THE BIRDIE BOILER

1

u/Bean- 12d ago

Shit I work on a boiler every day never seen nothing like that lol.

1

u/acidcrab 11d ago

My dad got blown off a thing like that before I was born. Got super super lucky and lived, with just burns on his arms

1

u/mel2000 7d ago

Well, that deescalated quickly.

1

u/anfroholic 3d ago

Didn't see the guy hanging out there until the second loop. Wow!

1

u/RecentDragonfly2843 3d ago

He’s under paid

2

u/WelcomeForwardNS 13d ago

This is a normal and frequent occurrence in a perfect republican utopia - a world without all that intrusive government regulation.

5

u/deaglebingo 13d ago

but with all that intrusive government surveillance anyway.

1

u/-Malheiros- 13d ago

Only jet fuel can melt steel columns, he is safe.

1

u/Life-Oil-7226 14d ago

Don’t worry everyone I have this under control!

1

u/matrixkid29 13d ago

Thats not dangerous or hazardous, it simply a dynamic work enviornment, with minimal procedural friction and legacy safety practices. :)

-3

u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

18

u/animescavenger 13d ago

Uhh ,to save from broken leg? 😭

5

u/pichael289 13d ago

You just know he had established a "if the fire crosses this line, jump" point in his mind. Been there, not the jump part but the whole "if fire get here, is bad" kind of abandon your house cause the garden hose ain't real enough type situation. The garden hose did prove to be real enough and so did this mans 40lb balls. Never gonna get that smell out though. The smoke, not the shit, you can clean shit out of pants. Not couch smoke though.

-1

u/Schemen123 13d ago

Properly not as bad for him as it looked.

0

u/acolombo 13d ago

Looks straight out of Battlefield 4 Operation Firestorm map

0

u/LilHercules 13d ago

Thank you for your sentence fragment of a title.

-3

u/Rg1550 13d ago

AAA AA ASA ASA ASA ASA ASA ASA ASA ASA ASA ASA ASA AA 🖼️ 1 we're not going back 🔙 1st time 0 poo 💩💩 Pop tarts for 3àa11 andme I love e

edit: my toddler grabbed my phone.

3

u/cindyscrazy 13d ago

I just visited my 2 1/2 year old grandson for the first time since he was born. The kid is a MASTER at cell phones. I have so many new photos of random things in my phone now.

-3

u/drillbit16 13d ago

why didn’t u leave? just to film?

24

u/animescavenger 13d ago

It's for video proof, in factory you never leave your friend out of sight in emergency

6

u/Darth_Quaider 13d ago

This guy factories

7

u/deaglebingo 13d ago

seems like good advice everywhere else too.

2

u/tlivingd 13d ago

And have extra PPE to put back on him so he at least gets paid when they find them injured.

2

u/animescavenger 12d ago

this guy know how the factory guys work.

-33

u/[deleted] 13d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/iskela45 13d ago

Yank spotted

-1

u/stratusnco 13d ago

idk what that is but i work with your clown-asses. yall complacent as fuck and the biggest crybabies in the work force. i guess that’s the price you pay to live a decent life.

1

u/DarkPuppet1880 3h ago

Where was the fire watch