building fire with ammo inside
Coomba:
Interesting question about a fire. I am a fireman in a larger US city, and it happened to me. I was on the first engine to arrive at a residential fire a year ago or so, where we heard ammo shots going off inside. Building fires are actually quite loud when you get up close and inside. But, discharging rounds is a very distinctive sound, and even with all the adrenalin pumping, it gives one reason to pause when you recognize what that noise is.
It's hard to speak for all firemen out there, and being a gun enthusiast, when I hear ammo explosions from inside a building that has a ripping fire going, I am very cautious. The bullets just popping off don't scare me, they are like a firecracker, but, when you have bullets going off like that, the likelihood of a gun being stored inside with a round in the chamber is much higher. I AM afraid of that. Sure enough, when we were doing the mop-up, we found an AK, with a mag attached, and rounds in it.... We were lucky, those rounds did not go off.
In that example, in a fire, the way the heat spreads, if you have a loaded gun, the rounds in the clip are exposed to more heat quicker than the one in the chamber, and thus they will likely discharge before the one in the chamber. So, in that scenario, you'd have ONE that went off while in the chamber, (as the others in the clip are already discharged) sending a projectile down the barrel with the same velocity as if it was purposefully fired. For every chambered bolt action or semi-auto firearm in the fire, there is the potential for one round to exit the bbl in a fashion that can very deadly. Revolvers, depending on the design can have more.
