In article ,
"O. Sami Saydjari" wrote:



As I recall, there has been some issue that inhaling Halon can be pretty
bad for people's health. Why is a Halon fire extinguisher a great idea.

Halon itself is non-toxic. When exposed to heat (as in a fire) some
byproducts are toxic. Also, a high concentration of Halon while not
toxic is not a survivable atmosphere. That being said, fire and fire
products are not survivable/toxic...and they also cause a lot of pain.
Use the extinguisher to put the fire out, it's the lesser of the evils.
Halon is a wonderful extinguishing agent in a confined space such as a
cockpit and it does no harm to electronics, avionics, etc.

Also, this might sound dumb, but don't C02 extringuisher work by
depriving fires of 0xygen? It seems to me that in a small aircraft
cabin, one might also end up depriving the pilot and crew of oxygen as
well. Perhaps, one can survive long enough to put out the fire and then
open the air vents?!

Generally a handheld extinguisher doesn't contain enought CO2 to
incapacitate you before you can vent the cabin.

Has anyone out there experienced an in-flight cabin fire that they put
out with an extinguisher? What was it like?


No inflight cabin fires, but I worked Crash Rescue for 20 years.

--
Dale L. Falk

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing
as simply messing around with airplanes.

http://home.gci.net/~sncdfalk/flying.html