The tragic fatal explosion that claimed a Firefighter’s life last week has a lot of folks claiming this was a COM DUST event. But after close examination of scene photos, I am confident this event was a syn-gas explosion with possibly some “fines” igniting during the event. These events are not all that rare and almost always involve syn-gas. In 2001, a local business has a rotary kiln dryer for wood chips. The business is one of the worlds largest pet bedding manufacturers. The kiln began smoking so the FD was called. After some time, the FD decided they needed to open the kiln and as soon as they did, a backdraft occurred burning several FF’s. Now we do not yet know if this silo was opened and this led to this event; but we do know the wood chip silo held something highly energetic, such as syn-gas. Here is how this highly flammable gas is produced inside a wood chip silo…