Flaming Spontaneity

Fair warning: I'm going gruesomely spontaneous this week, taking a look at a phenomenon that has long intrigued me, and maybe some of you as well, spontaneous combustion.

Simply put, it's when things suddenly burst into flames seemingly for no apparent reason, through no external agency. One minute they are not on fire and the next minute they are - spontaneously.

Things that are on record as having spontaneously combusted include hay, charcoal, coal, cotton, copra, compost heaps and manure piles, linseeds, pistachio nuts, motion picture film and human beings.

What is actually happening is this (our Saturday science lesson, gentle readers). When a substance with a relatively low ignition temperature, such as the majority of those materials listed above, begins to generate heat due to exothermic internal reactions (by oxidation or bacterial fermentation), because these materials are also good thermal insulators the heat cannot escape, leading to what is called thermal runaway (i.e. rapidly accelerating temperatures as heat produced exceeds heat dissipated). Given sufficient quantities of fuel, heat and oxygen (the three sides of the 'fire triangle' many of us will have learned on fire-prevention courses) autoignition results and whoof, your hayrick, coalmine, cotton store, mountain of pistachio nuts or refuse heap is ablaze without prior warning.

As a side note, that's the reason why hay or straw bales, which are known to be very good insulators and are used increasingly in the building trade, have to be treated with a certified fire-retardant before use.

Having worked for over thirty years for the photographic film manufacturer Kodak, I was intrigued to learn that the fire which completely destroyed the 20th Century Fox film storage facility was a case of spontaneous combustion made possible by the New Jersey heatwave of 1937. Motion picture stock being made of nitrocellulose, the stock in the vaults - the master tapes of thousands of silent movies - quickly went though the exothermic internal reaction/thermal runaway sequence and once alight, as nitrate film produces its own oxygen supply as it burns (it's highly flammable even under water), the whole store and the building housing it was destroyed in a savage fireball. By the early 1950s. film stock was virtually nitrate-free.

But I know that you're all really dying to know about the phenomenon of so-called spontaneous human combustion. What are the facts? Does it actually exist? Is it anything more than pseudo-science? 

The net result of my copious (and rather unsettling) research leads me to believe that in the majority of the hundreds of reported cases of human beings burning to death unexpectedly, the majority can be explained by a combination of the physical condition of the deceased prior to the conflagration and the likely presence of an external heat source.

By that I mean that most victims have been elderly, relatively immobile, often alcoholics and/or obese, and a nearby flame (candle, cigarette, open fire) was the probable source of ignition. Immobility meant a low chance of the victim extinguishing the fire, clothing allowed the flames to spread and acted as a wick in combination with fatty tissue or alcohol. And the fact that the bodies burned but not the surrounding area can be accounted for by a combination of the nature of such fires (flames are small and vertical, as in a candle, without horizontal spread) and the relative isolation of the bodies (lack of surrounding combustible materials). 

The scientists claim, with some justification, that the probability of human beings spontaneously combusting is extremely low, what with there being billions of people on the planet but only a handful of claimed incidents (less than two hundred) over several centuries (i.e. less than one per year).

And yet....and yet....I'll leave you with the details of a recent case, the death of Michael Faherty in 2010:

"The body of 76 year old Michael Faherty, was found in the living room of his home in Clareview Park at Ballybane in the Irish city of Galway on 22nd December 2010. The scene was searched by forensic experts from the Gardai and the fire service. The fire investigators concluded that no accelerants were used and that the open fireplace in the room was not the cause of the fire. A post-mortem carried out by pathologist Grace Callagy noted that Faherty had suffered from Type 2 diabetes and hypertension but had not died from heart failure. Callagy concluded that the extensive nature of the burns sustained precluded determining the precise cause of death  The coroner in the case could not identify the cause of the death due to extensive internal organ damage and concluded that 'this [case] fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation'."' 

Make of that what you will.

In conclusion, and as an experiment in more-or-less spontaneous writing, I've created this new poem. It started off as the Infernal Combustion Engine, morphed into the Spontaneous Combustion Engine, then took a musical left-turn into the Spontaneous Combustion Orchestra before settling down into the strange fancy you see before you.

Oscar Conan Cassidy's Spontaneous Combustion Chamber Orchestra Presents...

Stravinsky's Firebird like you've never heard,

played with gusto by an enthusiastic ensemble 

of slightly obese, alcoholic virtuosos gathered 

in the great hall of the people before an invited 

audience of scientists, sceptics and their wives -

for here we still live in strictly patriarchal time.

Oscar Conan Cassidy, Bungo to his friends, he

of an unkempt shock of red hair wields a baton,

taps to extract all the coughs from the audience,

and in ensuing silence winks slyly at his combo

who plunge madly in, staccato brass, plucking

strings, flailing with exothermic verve, sucking

energy out of thin air - the audience gasps - and

hitting a groove of sawing violins, febrile flutes, 

pulsating horns louder, faster, heat the tempo to

thermal runaway, wild-eyed, ecstatic, rising to

fever pitch until in a crescendo of flashing bows

sparking horns, the nub of autoignition reached,

his whole ensemble erupts in flames. Scientists

and sceptics reel back in fear, polite wives grin,

haven't had such fun in years, a ceiling  falls in,

the Firebird can flee, the combo a semi-circular

heap of ashes, molten brass, incendiary hearts,

because in poetry like this all things are possible.

Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S ;-)