Gasoline vapors have the explosive potential of dynamite, steam, and natural gas.
Combine gasoline vapors with an ignition source and you have the recipe for instant disaster.
If you have an attached garage at your residence and you park a vehicle, store a gas lawnmower, gas weed-whacker, or place a gas can in your garage, you should know that things can go very wrong.
The city of San Antonio has, in the past, chosen to ignore the dynamics of gasoline vapors.
Gasoline vapors are heavier than air, they sink to the lowest available level, and they begin to fill the room (aka: residential garage) with flammable and explosive vapors.
The city of San Antonio has allowed homebuilders to build homes without proper venting in the garage walls and/or garage door. These vents allow the heavier-than-air fumes to escape the structure.
That’s right. In spite of the incredible damage and death that gasoline vapors can cause, homebuilders have been allowed to build homes with improperly located, improperly sized, and ‘missing’ gasoline vapor garage vents.
For years, our city’s firefighters have known the damage and gore that happen as a result of gasoline vapors that are ‘trapped’ in a garage, yet they are at the mercy of San Antonio Code officials and the City Council, when it comes to this entirely avoidable danger.
There’s more. Codes, for years, have required that there be no ignition source (I.e water heater pilot lights, burners, sparking devices, laundry equipment, etc.) within 18 inches of the lowest level of the garage.
So what does the city of San Antonio do, they let builders design and construct residences with laundry equipment located in the garage.
Finally, the ‘Perfect Storm’. Builders have been allowed to build houses with no gasoline vapor garage vents, allowed builders to place laundry equipment or water heaters on the floor of the garage, and install garage passage doors without self-closing devices.
The city of San Antonio not only puts its citizens at risk, our firefighters are being asked to fight fires and rescue people that are put at risk because of city officials that succumb to stupidity.
No, the city of Austin does not require gasoline vapor garage vents to be installed. Surprised? Look at their freeway system.
