Paintball related death

[JoseDominguez]

Jesus, it was a full size CO2 tank.......
I just thank god I use air tanks that are regularly checked by H-pac.
Air and CO2 filling has always scared me. Now I'm really worried.
We can't let this happen here.
Someone died for nothing. It could happen at any fill station anywhere.... a bit of extra care on our parts would help. Team captains...... are all of your players competent to fill? do they know their markers well enough?

 

[Hotpoint]

Originally posted by JoseDominguez
Jesus, it was a full size CO2 tank.......
I just thank god I use air tanks that are regularly checked by H-pac.
Air and CO2 filling has always scared me. Now I'm really worried.
We can't let this happen here.
Someone died for nothing. It could happen at any fill station anywhere.... a bit of extra care on our parts would help. Team captains...... are all of your players competent to fill? do they know their markers well enough?

I think having enough wits about you to look you are unscrewing the right thing would have solved this one

If the reg/valve is not properly threadlocked in it can unscrew (I've seen it). Turn too many threads on a full bottle and the pressure can strip the rest of the threads before you notice the pressure escaping

Paranoia pays off. Watch the person on the rig in front of you because he/she may not be concentrating on the task at hand

 

[Philip]

Maybe some sort of bottle cage at the air stations(nothing major). WOuld also help with pressure fittings going and anything else that trys to make holes in people.

 

[Skeet]

Thing is....how the hell, is it that easy to unscrew even a partially filled bottle?? Even trying to unscrew my bottle when the guage is reading next to nothing is difficult....
Yeah...a dog leg entry cage (no need for a door then) could be usefull

 

[Hotpoint]

Originally posted by Skeetmaster
Thing is....how the hell, is it that easy to unscrew even a partially filled bottle?? Even trying to unscrew my bottle when the guage is reading next to nothing is difficult....

Guy on my team once did it unscrewing a tank from his shocker. We managed to scream at him to stop before his 1.1L full of CO2 did a mortar impression

He wasn't paying attention. Fortunately some of us were

 

[dr.strangelove]

I like how the word "paintball gun" gets used about 9 times in that story when the "gun" actually had jack sh!t to do with the woman's death. Still no good for the public image, even with it being "the gun's cartriage" that caused the damage. One thing comes to mind, how the hell did he hit this person in the head? When I unscrew my tanks, it's always toward the ground. What, did he balance the marker on his shoulder and start taking the thing off? Idiot. It's really irritating to see stories like this over simple little safety issues.

 

[dr.strangelove]

Originally posted by Skeetmaster
Thing is....how the hell, is it that easy to unscrew even a partially filled bottle?? Even trying to unscrew my bottle when the guage is reading next to nothing is difficult....

Air bottles are much harder to do that with because of the immense pressure. Co2 is stored as a liquid and it's gaseous pressure is only 700-900 psi (as opposed to an air bottle under 3000-5000 psi)

 

[JoseDominguez]

yup, unscrewing the wrong bit on a badly thread locked CO2 bottle is easy enough........ chatting while unscrewing? not looking down or just not knowing what you are doing.........we need more respect for our kit before this happens here too.

 

[Mark]

Further update together with the news report as a link within the page.

http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/2854345/detail.html