Flare Disposal

[jbbmillar]

Flare Day

"Flare Day" can be a great educational opportunity where old flares can be tried and disposed. The local SoCal CG Auxiliary holds (or used to) an annual "Flare Day" here at King Harbor.

Shoot meteor flares, learn what smoke devices do, and learn first hand about how hand-held flares shed burning hot debris. The activities included hands-on fire extinguisher training with a fire in a large tub. I think one year the CG chopper came buy and demoed a water deployment.

It was educational to me to watch how meteor flares don't go as high and don't burn as long a one might think. Also interesting that a some of the older meteor flares were duds - age? improper storage? who knows?


A little off topic, but "Appendix I - Flare Incidents" to the U.S. Coast Guard Addendum to the United States National SAR Supplement discusses flares from a SAR perspective.

https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/CG-5R/manuals/COMDTINST%20M16130.2F.pdf

 

[psneeld]

There is definitely some great info in there..... understanding all the bits and pieces of flare sightings is important to the success of both using one and locating the user.

The diagram that shows how far away a gun (no parachute) flare might be gives the impession that you will see the flare rise and fall at max distance....no so fast. All you might see at that distance is a flicker of red for a second on the horizon...not this picture perfect flare arc. It is better explained up in I.1.2


"For example, a hand-held flare in a recreational boat seen on the horizon by a reporting source standing on the beach, assuming the observer’s eye and the flare are both six feet above the water, will be approximately 5.75 NM away, while a parachute flare rising to 1200 feet and seen on the horizon by the same reporting source could be more than 40 NM away."


The there about 100 more possible things that people report as flares...my favorite was a guy driving his car, in the rain, over a bridge and in his rearview mirror saw something red go up.


After searching the only possible nearby creeks for over an hour....with no results...it took me 2 more hours to convince the Rescue Center what the guy saw was a taillight of a car driving up the steep part of the bridge as he had just leveled off and his rear window was covered in heavy rain. The importance of asking the right questions to the reporting source can be invaluable.



Could it have been a flare? yes...but till you go and search and are absolutely positive it wasn't...you assume it was.


Yep doing some thing right isnt as easy as it sounds....very frustrating when family/friends are quick to say "whats taking so long?" or "you are doing it all wrong".

 

[High Wire]

What I learned from 12 ga. Arial flares is they come down burning. We watched a neighbor shoot a few off his back deck years ago. One lit the marsh on fire and another rolled down another neighbors roof and melted through the rain gutter.