Fire Equipment

According to Wikipedia a Portable Fire Extinguishers is;

A fire extinguisher is an active fire protection device to extinguish or control a fire, often in emergency situations. Typically a fire extinguisher consist of pressure vessel containing an agent that when discharged, can extinguish a fire.

Not all fires are the same. If you use the wrong type of fire extinguisher on the wrong class of fire, you can, in fact, make matters worse.

To assist people quickly identify the right type of fire extinguisher, pictographs are used to represent different classes of fire. There are six different classes represented by the letters A, B, C, D, E and F.

These pictographs can be found on all modern fire extinguishers and indicate which classes of fires the extinguisher will work for, or should not be used for.

Fires are normally classified according to the fuel involved, however, any fire that involves energised electrical equipment is always classified as a class (E) until the electrical circuit is disconnected. It is then reclassed according to the type of material that is burning.

Portable fire extinguishers are generally provided as "first attack" units in fire fighting and should only be used in early stages of fire before it can spread and develop heat. There are five different types of extinguishers, and selection of extinguishers must be made with the class of fire in mind: