Danger Of Fires With Header Harvesters

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 97, 13 February 1950, Page 4

Danger Of Fires With Header Harvesters

The importance of taking precautions to minimise the damage which may be caused through fires started by header harvesters is stressed by the Department of Agriculture. Nearly every season cases of fires on machines have been reported, but though damage has often been only slight a fire which started from a header last season swept across a field under a strong north-wester-ly wind, destroying crop, header, farm house, half the implement sheds and the machinery in them, and several chains of hedge. Fires have small beginnings and can be put out quickly if the means are on hand. They may occur in the harvest field after an engine backfire resulting in red-hot pieces of carbon being shot from the exhaust pipe and falling in dry herbage. Again, fan draught draws up sihall pieces of dry leaf and flag, and if they lodge against the exhaust manifold they soon catch fire. If sparking occurs between frayed electrical leads and the engine block or chassis in the presence of leaking, petrol, a serious fire will ensue.

To minimise the risk of fire farmers should have portable extinguishers fitted to equipment such as headers; their cost is only a very small fraction of that of a header harvester.