Just outside UD‘s office window (she’s not on campus today), one of the many food trucks along GW’s main drag is on fire.
Social media means that there are many excellent photographs of the smoke and flames. Apparently it’s the Falafel Bus. Lots of smoke – visible across the river in Virginia.
One student tweets:
Currently a falafel food truck on fire on campus and I just really feel like this is somehow something that would happen.
Yesterday UD had Indian food for lunch from the truck parked next to the Falafel Bus … There are food trucks everywhere, and maybe the student’s right that midday, with tons of students lined up for a meal, the situation is a grease fire waiting to happen.
Three injured people are at GW Hospital.
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A 2012 New York City fire department study on food trucks found several common fire hazards that could cause explosions, including the presence of multiple propane cylinders, hot fryer oil and grills, compressed gasses, high voltage electricity and bio hazards from unsafe sanitary conditions.
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Taken by a student from his dorm across the street.
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UPDATE: The likely cause:
A fire that destroyed a food truck Wednesday at George Washington University, leaving three workers injured, started when an employee tried to fill a gas generator while the vehicle was running and food was being prepared and served, according to the D.C. fire department.
A spokesman for the department said the fire started on the outside of the Falafel Bus and quickly spread to the interior, where fuel feeding hot stoves added to the fire’s intensity and helped it quickly spread…
Safety guidelines prohibit mobile vending trucks from refueling while engines are running and while still open to the public. Ideally, the fire department says, the trucks are shut down and driven to a gas station where generators can safely be refilled. At least, officials said, the trucks should be shut to the public, turned off and allowed to cool down before refueling.
November 16th, 2016 at 8:33PM
grease fires can be frightening in full sized kitchens can’t imagine one in such close quarters.
November 17th, 2016 at 9:27AM
Not just in close quarters, but with a gas tank nearby. Very scary.
The last time I was in DC, I walked past a … mobile bar? It had a row of seat each with pedals, under a nice canopy. It was so strange, and now I wonder if I dreamed it all up? Is it a DC thing?
November 17th, 2016 at 10:02AM
Anon: Yes – the addition of gas tanks is in a way incredible. I mean, it’s incredible that the technology of food trucks – and in particular many, many food trucks in close heavily populated quarters – doesn’t attract the attention of some safety official or other…
A mobile bar, pedals, a canopy — it indeed sounds like the sort of contraption one might find in a dream rather than in the real world… As I think about it, I’m laughing – it’s kind of hilarious to imagine people getting drunk and then manipulating those pedals to scoot around together. LOL. Guess it’s better than having them go out and get in their cars…
Or maybe it’s an exercise thing? Like soul cycle, only this would be alcohol cycle??? MORE lol.
November 17th, 2016 at 10:03AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/million-dollar-idea-a-mobile-bar-that-lets-customers-pedal-up-and-down-streets-while-drinking-2011-1
November 17th, 2016 at 1:59PM
Yes, that’s it! But your local one is called the Trolley Pub.
November 17th, 2016 at 10:24PM
Two comments:
(1) Refilling gas while engine running in the vicinity of cooking heat would be a candidate for a Darwin Award (http://www.darwinawards.com/)
(2) I have seen such a pedal-powered vehicle in Krakow, Poland. They are popular with the UK stag-party crowd in eastern Europe where they are called Bier-Bikes or Pedal-Pubs.
November 17th, 2016 at 10:42PM
Polish Peter: A bunch of drunks pedaling around on one of those things seems to me also a Darwin Award in the making.