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On May 9 2008, three Dutch firefighters lost their lives tackling a blaze at a large commercial building situated in a shipyard in the village of De Punt in the Dutch province of Drenthe. The firefighters, Anne Kregel, Raymond Soyer and Egbert Ubels entered the building not knowing that a layer of highly combustible smoke and gas had built up under the roof. This ignited, resulting in a sudden spread of the fire accompanied by a major explosion that resulted in their deaths. == The Inquiry == The municipal authority requested that the Vereniging voor Brandweerzorg en Rampenbestrijding (Dutch Association for Fire Service and Disaster Relief) form an independent Committee of Inquiry. The Committee of Inquiry has not given an opinion on the exact cause of the fire, but has made a number of provisional conclusions. Many of these relate to the materials used in the construction of the building, whose roof was made of so-called sandwich insulation panels containing polyurethane foam insulation. Built with steel supporting construction the side walls of the building were made largely of profiled steel plate and the lower sections consisted of cavity wall. The roof was built using coated sandwich panels, consisting of two steel plates 0.4 to 0.5 mm thick, with an intermediate layer of polyurethane foam (PUR) 9 cm thick, serving as insulation. The committee reported:
These panels comply with the legal requirements that apply to such a building with regard to flammability and/or the spread of a fire, but at the same time they also present a major risk: if the panels are sufficiently heated, the polyurethane present will lead to gas emission, flammable and toxic fumes will be released. These fumes include ammonia, hydrocyanic acid, and nitrous fumes. The nitrous fumes have a characteristic yellow-brown colour. Initially, these fumes are released at the edges of the panels, but they also build up inside the sandwich panels themselves. The polyurethane foam also serves as the “glue” holding both steel plates together and adding stiffness to the construction. Upon being heated, the foam will soon separate from the steel plates, which are then no longer connected to each other. If a sufficiently concentrated layer of these fumes is present, it can be ignited by an external source and start burning. If polyurethane foam actually burns, it releases a greasy black smoke. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「De Punt fire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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