By Dave Ferman, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
IRVING, Texas -- One moment is all it takes for a car accident to turn into a fireball -- but it doesn’t have to, even if a collision leads to gallons of gas being superheated.
Thanks largely to Sgt. Michael Christy’s interest and Internet research, the Irving Police Department is safeguarding its vehicles against that moment.
“One thing is, NASCAR uses it -- and it’s temperature-activated,” Christy said. Halon fire-suppressant units are being installed in the department’s 120 cars at the rate of one per day, Irving police spokesman David Tull said.
Irving is the first police department in the country to use halon, a group of hydrocarbon compounds that apparently inhibit oxygen from combining with combustible chemicals, said Tull and Candy Brom of Fire 911, the Farmers Branch company installing the systems.
The department began installing the halon systems three weeks ago at a cost of $47,000, Tull said.
“In the grand scheme of things, it’s like adding a car to the fleet,” Tull said, “But how can you put a price on a life? NASCAR has had horrific crashes, and you can see the effect -- there can be flames all around the car, and they just disappear.”
In fact, the auto-racing association didn’t get Christy interested in halon -- not at first. In early 2004, he spoke with a Dallas police officer about anti-fire systems for patrol cars.
The officer told Christy about halon, and he did his research online. Fire 911 came in and did a demonstration, and the department took bids for anti-fire systems, including the shields used by numerous departments.
Christy and Brom say a halon system is better than shields, because it’s activated by temperature, not a crash. In the Irving cars, the system is installed in the trunk.
The system head -- which looks like a fire sprinkler system head used in many homes and businesses -- is installed under the trunk next to the gas tank. If the temperature gets to 287 degrees Fahrenheit, the halon, propelled by nitrogen, is released and displaces the oxygen while the nitrogen cools the area.
“It puts the fire out in one second,” Brom said. “It’s amazing. If you were on one side of the door and there was fire on the other side and you shot halon under the door, it would knock the flame far enough back that you could get out.”
“The officers are very impressed by it -- it means we’re being proactive,” Christy said.