Bike museum Timmelsjoch/Passo Rombo

breganzane said:
I'm struggling to understand how a modern multi-million dollar building, in a place like Austria, housing multi-million EUR worth of bikes can have such poor or even absent(?) fire suppression / sprinkler systems. I thought all that stuff was compulsory in any modern building, especially a public/commercial one.
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Leaves me totally baffled too, Steve. (But what the hell do I know ...)

 
The result of the investigation of the cause for the fire was a TV monitor which was used for presentations.
 
Water sprinklers have been mentioned but I wonder how effective they would be in a motor museum with all that oil, battery’s and potentially petrol ( are they all drained?) I have been watching the Sammy Miller museum on YouTube and I haven’t noticed any sprinklers. Is there an alternative to a sprinkler system ? Many years ago a motor museum in Weybridge flooded and lots of bike were ruined, worst nightmare for all of us. Never heard of a battery charging catching fire but always a worry.
 
Interesting videos , great idea but at 4milion to fit & one false alarm ..I know nothing of the foam but the powder is very corrosive, I rebuilt a Kawasaki endurance racer that had been “put out” and the alloy was really pitted- better than me
ted though. I suppose in a museum you could have different sectors unlike big open plan aero hangers so would be less like to bugger the whole place up .
 
I know it is easy to be a smart-ass afterwards, but the building was 90% made of wood as it seems with no fire protecting coating. Although it looked great, this is by nature asking for trouble and a nightmare for the firefighters. Almost impossible to get fire out, as the wood might not obviously burn, but will continue to glow and all it takes is one brise of wind and it's on fire again.

Friend of mine had his house lost in fire just 4 weeks before last Christmas. It was a half-timbered house that they re-build roughly 20 years ago. what they did not recognise is that one brick of the chimney was obviously not gas-tight anymore and over time, fell out. Unfortunately it was at a hidden place between two floors and so the hot air could bypass the chimney and started to heat one of the timber bars. must have taken several years, but one day, the bar caught fire and the house burned down. 4 fire trucks took almost 6 hours of constantly pouring water in until they were sure it does not burn anymore... and that was a tiny house of just about 100m2... Luckily, they had installed fire alarms in every room and one of them woke them up early enough to wake up the children and leave the house before it seriously caught fire...

I hope they can build it up again, but hopefully they use some less fire-prone materials. Might not look as nice as it was, but might be more fire-resistant then...
 
All the facts aren't in yet, but my (pre) conclusion is the same Lothar, the building was a bit of a dumb design - especially on the top of a pass like that. The proof is in the pictures > the base material of the structure plus any fire suppression absolutely did not work.
 
A son of mine had a Nissan GTR. A car.
It was stolen at gun point but the police finally found it.
The thieves broke into the police car pound at night and emptied a couple of foam extinguishers into it to erase all fingerprints and DNA.

Wouldn't have happened with sprinklers.

Paul
 
helicopterjim said:
Lots of fire suppression options....... but they all involve flooding the place with something ....... whether foam or dry chemical.

Jim
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Or scavenging oxygen from the air with an inert gas. A lot of data centres use this method, non destructive to the servers and equipment but lethal for any unfortunate humans!
 
rowdypat said:
Or scavenging oxygen from the air with an inert gas. A lot of data centres use this method, non destructive to the servers and equipment but lethal for any unfortunate humans!
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When I worked in mechanical building services design, I did a heap of fire suppression system designs. Mostly water sprinkler systems and a few halon gas dump systems.

Petroleum fires normally require foam dump systems, but I suspect the quantities of oil and petrol in that bike museum would have been insignificant in relation to the wooden structure of the building (I can't imagine the bikes being stored with full fuel tanks), so water sprinklers probably would have been the system of choice in that building.

Halon gas was a good fire suppressant and was widely used where the building contents were sensitive to water, such as computer rooms. Halon doesn't displace the oxygen and it's non toxic so humans can survive in the space when the gas has been released. It works by interrupting the chemical reaction that happens when stuff burns. It stops the oxidation reaction like a kind of anti-catalyst. It makes your voice go weird though. Unlike helium which gives you a squeaky voice when you breathe it, halon makes your voice go deep. Unfortunately halon is an ozone depleting gas and was prohibited under the Montreal Protocol, except perhaps for very unusual circumstances where pretty much no other system will suit. I think halon may still be permitted in places where the occupants can't escape, such as on board an aircraft. There's not much point extinguishing an aircraft fire with CO2 if it suffocates the plane's occupants.

CO2 gas dump is an effective fire suppressant. It works by flooding the space with CO2 and displacing much of the oxygen. But it's way more dangerous to humans than halon. Anyone caught in a CO2 gas dump is unlikely to survive, so has pretty much gone out of favour on safety grounds unless there is no alternative.

I've been out of the business of fire suppression systems for many years now, so I haven't kept up to date. But as far as I'm aware, an effective replacement for halon gas hasn't been developed.
 
Watermist is very effective even in the high volumes of big ship engine rooms, There are lots of videos of it. With a fire at a place like the museum, once fire has taken hold of the wooden structure nothing much will stop it. Most public buildings (and boats) have structural fire divisions to try to contain it. Paul's workshop and now this, I reckon most of us are taking a look at our own situation.
 
Tippie said:
I reckon most of us are taking a look at our own situation.
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Hmm … Yes. Good idea. I have a couple of dry powder extinguishers in the garage plus a fire blanket. I also have a separate little 3m x 3m garden shed in the back corner of my block that I use as a remote spot to store flammable liquids. It contains stuff like tins of paint, thinners, fuel containers (plus the mower, chainsaw, and other stuff that contains fuel). It doesn't eliminate fuel in the garage that's in bike tanks though. I'm also careful when doing anything that can create an ignition source like grinding or welding. I could probably do more. Like tidy the place up for instance. It can be difficult to attack spot fires if you can't move around the space easily.
 
breganzane said:
Really sad. I'm struggling to understand how a modern multi-million dollar building, in a place like Austria, housing multi-millionEUR worth of bikes can have such poor or even absent(?) fire supression / sprinkler systems. I thought all that stuff was compulsory in any modern building, especially a public/commercial one.
I've been over Timmelsjoch but don't remember the building, so it must have been pretty new. Any word on rebuilding? I'm not sure collectors would be lining up to loan exotic bikes/cars in a hurry though...
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I was wondering the same thing, seems ludicrous to me
 
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