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I wrote this story for our local aviation followers. it is applicable to any petrol burning vehicle when being refuelled.

Static electricity. It is a hazard and it’s serious.

One evening in October 1979 we were alerted of a petrol fire at the Finley airstrip which is 10 miles north of us here at Tocumwal. It was 80 drums (44gal) of Avgas exploding and had some resemblance to the Melbourne Moomba festival. Fortunately no one was burned. Miraculous. Six drums went through the back wall of a hanger about 70 feet away. Ignited by static electricity. I’ve included a photo of the hanger and whilst it may not look too bad do keep in mind it has faded in the 46 years since it happened and when I shot this photo.

About 1971 a helicopter and drums of avgas were burned at Bedford Downs in the Kimberlies. So was the pilot and engineer who were refuelling it. Both severely. I made a visit to them in the Kununurra hospital. They had refuelled one side fuel tank of the helicopter and then passed the hose back over the Perspex bubble. Again static electricity.

I once saw a poster at a service station of a massive fire. They were asking customers to ground all fuel containers whilst filling them and that included plastic ones. The customer who caused this fire had filled a container while holding it in their hand off the ground. Static electricity again.

I also had an incident. I was refuelling my trustee ol Agcat from a 44 and I felt electricity run through my body. An employee had fitted a composite camloc coupling to the hand pump which was acting as an insulator and thus not earthing it as a metal one would. We fuelled for the remainder of the day using jumper leads to earth aeroplane and truck. It was also my practice to purchase the proper fuel hose that has a copper wire running through it and earth it to the pump camloc at the source end and the delivery camloc at the delivery end.

Now, there is a very important lesson to be learned from all those incidents and one in particular from the fire at Finley. When I was learning to fly my instructor told me never to park an aeroplane in a hanger with breaks on for a fireman will not know how to release them and pull an aeroplane clear. Well there were 3 aeroplanes in the Finley hanger at this time. Fortunately one firemen by the name of John Hand was the owner of one and John attended this fire and had the hanger keys in his pocket. I spoke to him today whilst preparing this paper. He told me there were three aeroplanes in the hanger and they were pulled out before six drums started to become airborne and penetrated the hanger rear wall. He said in addition to parking them breaks free, one should also leave the pull bar/handle attached to facilitate pulling them clear.
This is a picture of the back wall of the hanger now in December 23. You may think the scars are not that badly because it’s now 45 years since it happened and they have faded. What was new replacement sheets of iron does not show in this picture.