SAAMI video on ammunition and fire fighter safety

After my house burned, friends salvaged powder in scorched cans and ammunition in partly melted bags and boxes. (I was in the hospital, egress from second floor, not burns.)

Nothing went off. I am sure that if anything had kaBoomed or Popped, the fire department would have backed off, concentrated on keeping fire from spreading and let it go. As it was, nothing much was recovered except my guns and some supplies anyhow.

"25 straight minutes of me crying over all that wasted ammo." +1
Would have liked to see rimfire tested with that drop test but other then that good find.

You beat me to it HSO. I just logged in to post this (good thing I did a search). I thought the video was very well done. As much as it pains me to see so much good ammo destroyed, it's for a good cause. Thanks for posting.

The amount of ammo destroyed there makes me want to cry.

Blasting caps, bulldozers???? Wow.

OK that just dispelled every damn belief I had about ammo in a fire.

Only thing they didn't cover that's relevant to me (and others on here) is what about ammunition stored in government surplus ammo cans (50 cal / 30 cal)?

Do those contain the pressure enough to cause a chain reaction or do they pop open and vent without issue?

The comments on that video are hilarious

What a waste. Poor children in Africa could have used that.

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Pretty much mirrors what I've come to understand. There's a danger to eyes with detonating ammunition, but anything else will be superficial.

Even loose gunpowder in cans will just flash quickly. The risks assciated with other common accelerants in a fire are far greater.

If my place ever burned, the ammo and powder wouldn't be the scary parts; The multiple gasoline and diesel cans, mapp gas bottles and acetylene tank in the garage would. The 140 cubic foot acetylene tank would probably level the structure if it went

Been doing EOD/UXO stuff since 1959. i've burned a billion or two rounds of small arms ammo, mostly in open pits with scrap wood for cover, if any. Seldom does the bullet from a round project further than 20 feet from the pit.

Only thing they didn't cover that's relevant to me (and others on here) is what about ammunition stored in government surplus ammo cans (50 cal / 30 cal)?

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i've burned ammo in US military cans too. 99 percent of the time the bullets just dent the can. Sometimes .50 caliber ammo will blow the can open.

Steel cased ammo in calibers 12.7mm and 14.5mm are another matter. Sometimes these rounds project small fragments of the case at a high velocity.

Most of this stuff is 5.56mm and 7.62 ammo:

hso said:

Trent,

The individual rounds cook off without any cumulative effect in an ammo can. There's no mechanism to cause them to do so simultaneously.

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Cool.

alsaqr said:

i've burned ammo in US military cans too. 99 percent of the time the bullets just dent the can. Sometimes .50 caliber ammo will blow the can open.

Steel cased ammo in calibers 12.7mm and 14.5mm are another matter. Sometimes these rounds project small fragments of the case at a high velocity.

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What about 50 cal projectiles not loaded in the cartridges but stored in bulk? I have 11,000 projectiles stored (mostly 500 per 50-cal can), mixed incendiary, API, APIT, two types of tracer, and a few cans of spotter tracer? 6,000 of those are blue-tip incendiary, 3,000 are APIT or API, the remainder a mix of tracers. (They're stored in a separate building currently)

What about bulk packed primers? (Modern shipping containers where they're all in individual pockets isolated from one another). I have 110,000+ primers stored in a lightweight metal file cabinet (doors are flimsy and won't hold up to any pressure). These include 25k (5 cases) each of small rifle, small pistol, large rifle, large pistol, plus 10,000 50 BMG arsenal primers. These are stored separate from any powder or ammunition.

Smokeless powder - I keep in batches of 25 lbs in each storage area, separated from each other. I keep a few 100 lb kegs of 50 BMG powder off-site (not at home) in a climate controlled building. I'm assuming these just act like a short-lived accelerant?

I want to see what happens to 8lbs of powder. I have about 6 sitting side by side in my basement. I would assume just a big flash of fire, but I wonder if closed containers would cause anything else.

General Lee said:

I want to see what happens to 8lbs of powder. I have about 6 sitting side by side in my basement. I would assume just a big flash of fire, but I wonder if closed containers would cause anything else.

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I lit off a few pounds of H1000 (3-4 pounds) a few years ago in my driveway. It was stored in a clear plastic container too near a window, I think the UV light started breaking it down as it had an acid / bitter smell to it. I'd poured it in to a shallow pile and made a 2 foot long 1" wide 1/2" deep "trail" of powder to light. H1000 is a pretty slow burning powder (used in 300 Win Mag and other big cartridges).

I lost all the hair on my right hand & arm, parts of my eyebrows, and was a little "lopsided" on my haircut for a while... I was NOT expecting such a slow powder to go "so damn fast".

The rest of the 10 pounds I had to burn off I did a handful at a time in a bonfire - my little girls liked "Dad's magic sparkly fairy dust".

Since then I've learned that it's real good for grass, so if I ever have a batch go south on me again I'll just make my yard green.

hso said:

Put your powder in plywood boxes made of 3/4-in plywood if you're concerned.
Do the same for your primers.

I can't comment on the tracer and incendiary projectiles, but you can find out by contacting SAAMI and asking them for storage recommendations. The powder and projectiles won't explode, though.

Black powder and primers will, but not the stuff you're using. The primers won't all explode at once, but I wouldn't put all my boxes of primers in an ammo can where you could get a rapid serial detonation.

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Thank HSO.

I'm thinking the tracers and incendiaries would probably be the most hazardous thing I have. Not sure what the flash point is on those. The incendiaries have ~19gr of compressed flash powder inside steel canisters inside the jacket.. they'd probably go with quite a bit of force.

That was a really cool video...

I forwarded the link to our local fire chief to see if he would like to use it for training.

The quality of the production was very professional.... I'm guessing it cost around $500,000 total cost to put it together.

Wow, that was great. Kind of blows my mind.

I'd like to see similar tests done with 1, 4, and 8 pound containers of powder.

Woody

Noticeably painful to watch- especially the bulldozer.

However, those rounds' sacrifice in the name of productive science is noted, and saluted.

This pretty much ends all of the "rounds in a fire" or related discussions from this day forward......

Great video, must've been in excess of 100,000 rounds sacrificed for the cause?

Edit: nevermind, just watched the retail store simulation, where they use 100k+ rounds in just that one part

What I was really hoping for was what about ammo stored in a safe or rsc. I would think that it would be safest in it in a fire. If, from what they show, that ignited rounds can not penetrate sheet-rock, that a steel box would be even better. And the whole "pipe bomb" thing I have heard people say in the past about ammo stored in a safe seems to be discredited here too since there was never a massive explosion in any tests.

Great video! It will be used for training at my department and I will pass it along to colleagues at other departments.

Great video, but I started to feel nauseated about half way through it.

With today's prices of ammo .There is great harm that can come to firefighters and first responders from crazed ammo buyers running into the fire to save the ammo.

Be safe out there