re ammo in a fire was re waco burning bressler iftccu ca boeing com rick bressler writes small arms rounds set off outside of a firearm pose little risk except possibly eye injuries and minor wounds true large concentrations of ammo or magazines not the type you insert into your semi auto probably pose a larger risk but mostly from heat and flame this is also covered in the above reference no more risk than smaller stashes unless the stash is somehow confined so the heat from early ignitions could somehow bulk heat the remainder two years ago this month my house and office burned in my office was my reloading bench on the top shelf next to the wooden ceiling was about lbs of smokeless powder lbs of black powder several thousand primers and a couple thousand loaded rounds primarily in acp and the fire was extinguished before the area containing the reloading supplies were fully involved there was about of char on the joists subsequently removed by sandblasting lots of heat in other words none of the powder kegs ignited one lb can of pistol powder ignited no explosion as the can opened at the seam as it was designed to do the black powder cans were charred and got so hot the plastic lids completely melted and ran down inside the smokless powder was contained mostly in lb cardboard or metal kegs the kegs were charred badly enough that the paper labels burned completely off and in the case of the metal cans the plastic lids melted completely away many of the rounds cooked off they were in close proximity to wood on all sides so the effects were easy to observe in most cases with the rifle ammo the cartridge cases ruptured in the middle many bullets were found still in the neck small shards of brass were lightly stuck into the wood lightly enough that brushing them with a fingertip would usually dislodge them primers generally popped out of the primer pockets the acp rounds that cooked off left empty cases and bullets laying around no dents were observed above the storage area indicating the bullets left the cases slowly enough not to be a hazard ordinary small arms ammo is not a hazard when cooking off regardless of what the fbi says john john de armond wd oqc interested in high performance mobility performance engineering magazine tm interested in high tech and computers marietta ga send ur snail mail address to jgd dixie com perform dixie com for a free sample mag lee harvey oswald where are ya when we need ya
