alt Hacker NewsThe great butter and cheese fire of 1991
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A devastating 1999 fire in a tunnel connecting France and Italy was also caused by a truck full of flour and margarine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc_Tunnel_fire
Reminiscent of the Molasses Flood, though that was more tragic. Scale is a double-edged sword. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood
Reminds me of a friend who, having watched a documentary on the subject, decided to recreate a custard powder explosion in his student kitchen…
We forget how much thermal energy lives in things like butter and flour. Butter has roughly the same energy by mass as high-grade coal. But who ever sees a truck full of butter as a fire hazard?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc_Tunnel_fire (1999, 39 dead)
>> The fire burned for fifty-three hours and is estimated to have reached a temperature of 1,000 °C (1,830 °F), mainly due to the margarine load in the trailer, equivalent to a 23,000-litre (5,100 imp gal; 6,100 US gal) oil tanker
Wacky stuff. I guess one development since then is the Vacuum Excavator, I think they only started being built in the 90s. So you could send some round to suck up the cheese, but I'm not sure there would be enough capacity in the area as they are a niche tool (for excavating around buried services).