So, for months now my colleagues have been forced to listen to my complaints about the latest Road Traffic Regulations and the requirements that we must keep things like reflective vests, safety triangles and Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ) fire extinguishers in our cars, starting Friday 1 July.

I won’t go into the many, many reasons why I think this whole thing is a load of bollox again, but I am concerned that this fire extinguisher I am now forced to carry won’t actually do much of anyone a heap of good.

First off, it’s about the size of my forearm. Useful, I suppose, if my kettle spontaneously combusted. But my engine? I drive a small car, but even my micra-march I think could produce a bit more flame than this could handle. And, actually, my fire extinguisher is a full 250g larger than it even is required to be.

Even more worryingly, do I even know how to use the darn thing? Fortunately, it comes with instructions! Unfortunately, they’re also not very confidence inspiring.

Find below, a direct transcription with “sic” written all over it (that is, all errors are the errors of the manufacturer):

1. Shake the cylinder more times. Pull safety pin

2. Aim nozzle at the base of fire.

3. Squeezee Handle . Sweep side to side

Other points to note:

-    Every refilled or 5 year later the extinguisher could be reused only by the condition of passing 2.5 Mpa hydrostatic test every two years .
-    Check up this fire extinguisher and pressure gauge once a week it must be refilled once is discharge or if the pointer gauge is out of the green area.

Yeah. I look at the condition of half the cars in Harare, but with my SAZ approved fire extinguisher to hand I feel better all ready.

This entry was posted on June 28th, 2011 at 11:44 am by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.