What is a Fire Triangle?
The fire triangle is a triangle of three main elements for a better understanding of the fire and control of it. This triangle shows the main elements that are essential for Combustion like oxygen/air, heat, and burning material/fuel.
Fire Elements
Three components of fire heat, air, and fuel are essential for fire. When we want to control on fire, we should control on any one component. Then we can control fire.
1. Oxygen/air
Oxygen/air is a very important component of fire. We can control fire to control the supply of oxygen/air. For disconnecting the air supply to the fire, we cover the fire by making a cover shield at the fire area. Some types of fire extinguishers make shields around the fire area like CO2 (Carbon dioxide) and foam-type fire extinguishers. We can use dry sand for this purpose. Some types of fire when we can’t use common water to control it like electrical fire. Then we use CO2 and foam-type fire extinguishers.
2. Heat/Temperature
Heat burns the material or fuel with the help of oxygen/air. If we control heat we can also control fire. Some fire extinguishers are designed to control heat like water-type fire extinguishers or direct water. Water controls the heat and stops the burning of material. We can’t use water on an electrical fire or petroleum fire.
3. Fuel/Burning material
The third pillar of this triangle is burning material. If we remove burning material from the fireplace we can control the fire. If the burning material is sold then we can remove or make a distance between the material and fire place. In the case of petroleum product burning material then we can’t make the distance between fireplace and burning material.
Importance of Fire Triangle
This triangle is very important to understand the fire strategy and control on-fire procedure with control fire component.
How do you break a fire triangle?
Some methods to remove one of the elements (Oxygen, Heat, and fuel) from the fire triangle.
- Applying water to remove heat
- Smothering with mineral soil to remove oxygen
- Construction fuel breaks ahead of fire to remove fuel