MARYLAND — The Frederick tanker crash was a devastating crash. One person died and property was damaged as a result of the incident. Many people saw the video of flames shooting and swirling out from the tanker on that windy Saturday which the fire triangle can explain.
Fires need three main ingredients to start and sustain growth— oxygen, heat, and fuel.
These three ingredients are the key to any fire and we saw all three come together on Saturday as the strong winds brought in oxygen, the engine tanker brought in fuel, and the heat was provided by the slightly above-average temperatures during the day.
Let us start with the oxygen component first. Winds were gusty that day as we saw many areas seeing wind gusts reaching up to the 40-50 mph range and sustained winds around 20 mph throughout Central Maryland. The winds were in line with the wind advisory that we had in place during the day as a strong coastal system was brewing over New England. This brought in extra oxygen to feed the fire.
Next, we will focus on the heat component. While we would not call Saturday a hot or even warm day, it was still above average compared to what we normally see in early March. The high of 55 degrees on Saturday was 4 degrees warmer than our average helping add some warmth to this incident.
Last but not least, we talk about fuel. Fuels can come in many different forms that range from flammable liquids such as gasoline, oil, and kerosene, to things like grass, trees, and even piles of garbage. In this incident, there was a flammable liquid in the tanker that supplied the initial fuel for the fire to start, and as it spread to homes and trees surrounding the area those became more fuel for the fire to consume.
This all combined to create the fire on Saturday and while the heat component was not very high the strong winds and very flammable fuel were enough to overcome that barrier. Luckily, this did not lead to extreme fire behavior for the first responders as they were able to put out the fires without too much of a fight.
