[BC] KOMO, Seattle building fire

[PeterH]

On Jul 4, 2009, at 7:43 AM, Tom Spencer wrote:

> I recall when HALON was first being marketed, it was touted as having
> similar characteristics as CO2 (heavy gas, would tend to settle  
> near the
> floor) without the oxygen-depletion / displacement issues that CO2  
> has;
> a room fire extinguished by HALON was supposed to be able to be
> re-entered within a very few minutes, rather than ISTR something like
> the hour that a CO2 event was supposed to require to be vented.

At a former employer, we had a HALON system installed to protect our  
mainframe computer system.

The contractor wanted to test the HALON system, but he used FREON  
instead of HALON during the test, in order to reduce the cost of the  
test.

The system was triggered under test and FREON was released, with the  
effect that everyone on the machine room floor during that test was  
nearly asphyxiated.