Re: Why deliberately shorting equipment to blow breakers might be a bad idea . . .

["John, SW Missouri" <jmjones@xxxxxxxxx>]

Last I heard they had pretty much decided that it will be impossible to
determine the cause of the fire.  There's no doubt that service done
just prior to the fire will always be suspect.  About 10 months ago a
Chinese restaurant near me had a small fire just before closing.  The
fire department came and put out the small fire and told the owners to
go home.  About an hour later another fire was called in and the
building was a total loss.  Seems the fire department didn't do a very
good job of checking and a small undetected fire in the duct was the
cause of the more serious fire.

After a recent storm in my area there were numerous dumpsters in my
neighborhood.  One was filled half full with damp to wet roll
insulation.  Apparently someone threw a cigarette or something hot into
the dumpster and started this insulation burning.  I don't believe it
ever really grew into flames, but it smoldered all night and when we
came back in the morning the paint was totally burned off the dumpster
from the heat.  The insulation was still smolderng and putting out a
lot of smoke, but no flame.  Prior to this I had been under the
assumption that insulation was sort of fire resistant - guess not.