“What’s a fire and why does it, what’s the word…burn?” More than Princess Ariel from the Disney movie “The Little Mermaid,” it should be us who should be curious about fires and the why’s and how’s of it. To have a better understanding of fire, you need to know about the fire triangle. This triangle illustrates the key elements in producing fire and sustaining it, namely oxygen, fuel, and heat. When combined in the right mixture, it would surely create fire; and as long as all these elements are present, the fire would continue to burn.

Knowing the mechanics and elements of fire is essential in eliminating the risk of fire as well as knowing how to control and extinguish it. This would be most helpful in planning for a firefighting device like an automatic fire extinguisher to have at home or at the office. You can easily find the elements of fire all around you. Oxygen, as we all know is basically the air around us. All you need to add to the oxygen is the source of heat that would ignite and the fuel that would burn to complete the fire triangle. However, the right mixture or right amount and quantity of these elements are needed to be able to successfully produce a fire and maintain it.

A little bit of heat could not possibly ignite and set fire to a place. However, if the source of heat becomes hot enough, then it could ignite and burn. If you look around you, you would easily find sources of heat that could ignite if left unattended or if not properly maintained. You need to know about them so that you would know the danger they posed. One classic example would be when you are ironing and you forgot to unplug the flat iron when you are done. You can be sure that a fire would develop once the flat iron gets too hot. An automatic fire extinguisher in strategic places where fire is most likely to start like any hot surface, any source of heat, friction, naked flame, electricity, pressure, machinery, engines, etc. would be of great help in controlling the fire.

Fuel is anything that would burn easily like flammable or combustible materials, liquids, solvents gases, and chemicals. You can easily find them around you. Wood, paper, fabrics, furniture, plastic, gasoline, oil, grease, rubber, and paint are just some of the things that you might find in your place of work or at home that can easily catch fire if you are not careful enough. Having an automatic fire extinguisher would come in handy in fire emergencies.

Just the right combination of oxygen, heat, and fuel, and you will produce a fire. The fire would continue to burn and get out of control if there were things around it like paper or fabric that would serve as a fuel to the fire. Producing fire is really quite easy. However, if you remove just one of the elements of the fire triangle or keep them separate, then there would be no fire or it would easily be controlled and extinguished.