What are the different classifications of fire?
The four classifications of fire are A, B, C, and D. Class A fires are your combustible, or ordinary combustibles such as paper, wood, plastic. Your Class B fires are your flammable liquid fires. We are talking gasoline, diesel, oil here. Indeed it's cooking oil, primarily, and these types of substances. Class C are your energized electrical, such as an appliance that's plugged in, and has a power source that catches on fire, these would all be a Class C fire. When we remove the source of energy, it becomes a Class A fire, with just an ordinary combustible. And then we have Class D fires, which are what we call combustible metal fires. So metals ending in ium such as aluminium, titanium, magnesium. This is why often, when we ask someone if they had a fire, what kinds of things would they put on the fire if they didn't have an extinguisher, you'll get a real spectrum of answers. But one of the answers that you definitely want to educate on, is they'll say that you can throw salt on a fire. Salt is a combustible metal, because it's sodium chloride. We don't think of it in terms of that, but it actually can intensify the fire.
