Results tagged “flashfire”

According to the Daily News, the worker who was seriously injured during a flash fire at a Columbia-Presbyterian building is "clinging to life." Manuel Culcay suffered burned on 85% of his body; he is in critical condition at Harlem Hospital (which has a burn unit), breathing with the help of a ventilator. On Friday, Culcay, who works for Yonkers-based Acid Waste Management, had been cleaning out a water tank when the vapors of the alcohol cleaning solution ignited when someone turned on a halogen lamp. One of the paramedics who tended to Culcay, Mark Caplan, told the News that he and his partner had just dropped off a patient at Columbia-Presbyterian, "We were done with our shift. I guess we were at the right place at the right time," and added that they were praying for him.

A freaky flash fire in a mechanical room of a building on the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital campus left a maintenance worker with burns over 70 percent of his body this morning. A little before 10 a.m. workers were cleaning a domestic hot water tank in a 22nd-floor room, when, suddenly, there was "a little bit of an explosion and a flash fire," according to an FDNY spokesman. City Room reports that vapors from the cleaning solution were ignited after someone turned on a halogen lamp inside the drained tank. Accidents are not uncommon with halogen bulbs, which can reach temperatures as high as 1000 degrees and easily ignite any combustible material nearby. While they are more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, some have called for them to be banned; two years ago a rash of fires in Australia prompted one firefighter to call halogens "a bloody nightmare." All three workers injured in today's blaze were rushed to Harlem Hospital. One worker injured his arms and hands when he tried to pull the first man out of the tank, and the third suffered respiratory injuries.