Spontaneous combustion 2010.06.23 By Daniel Pellerin In Sherbrooke (Rock Forest), on june 22nd, Gaetan Drouin, the fireman's public relations person told reporters that the spontaneous combustion of varnish in rags was responsible for the fire that ravaged the self-storage units. Phoenix ha run into a few spontaneous combustion occurances over the past years. The most spectacular (and documented!!!) occurance is what happened in the kitchen of a local sushi restaurant. The cook had prepared a tempura batter mixture that he had left overnight in a sealed plastic container to leach out the excess oil. See the video on You Tube at the following adress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMVOBWx6MUs Oil will ignite at 180 degrees celcius. How does it reach this temperature? Take an oily substance, a confined environnement, ladd a ack of oxygen and a little time and you get POUF! the mixture ignites. Sort of like a diesel engine: the air / fuel mixture explodes once the pressure reaches the threshold. No spark is needed. What can we learn from this? 1) NEVER leave the oily (or varnishy) rags in a clump; apparently yesterday, it was mere hours after the woman left her varnish project that the fire started. 2) Find out what your neighbors are storing in the self-storage. Or store your valuable toys and goods in a better environnement. At Phoenix, our short and long-term storage is done onsite, in a secure, heated, ventilated environnement with regular visits from our staff. We control what comes in and what goes out of our facillity and the perimiter of the property is fenced, locked and lat night the floodlights light up the area. We don't want your valuable stuff to burn while it's under our care.