Following links from TSM this morning, I arrived at this tale of fire extinguishers, and the banishment thereof from English apartment buildings (excuse me, blocks of flats).
Notable quotables:
Dorset Fire and Rescue defended the move, saying: 'Obviously, in some cases, an extinguisher could come in useful but, with new building regulations, every escape route should be completely fireproof.'
Yup. Right up until someone actually moves into the building and piles a bunch of excess cardboard under the stairs. Or the landlord covers up damaged carpet with incompletely-fireproof throw rugs.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents backed their removal because different extinguishers should be used on different types of fire.
Riiiight. And those cheap 1A; 10B:C extinguishers I keep scattered around my house would be totally inappropriate for use on a flaming block of magnesium (or, for that matter, uranium), for which you'd want a D extinguisher. For anything you're likely to encounter in a residential setting, though, the basic multi-purpose extinguishers are just fine.
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