Quote:
Originally Posted by 865sp300e
Help me out with this, you had eight 30-minute flares and used seven. About 70 minutes passed prior to the arrival of MB support, however, we do not know how much time passed between stopping and the phone call (I estimate 20 minutes). The third flare was the first one to get run over which means about an hour had passed. The fourth flare was used to relight the run over third flare. The third flare runs out and then the fourth flare gets runover. A fifth flare is lit and about 90 minutes have passed.
What happened to flares six and seven?
|
A 30 minute flare will burn for 30 minutes in the best of conditions (i.e. no wind, no rain, 60°F outside, and at a perfect 45° angle). Most of the time they usually burn out around 25 minutes, in my experience.
Now add in that some of the flares were laying down (as the wire leg holder ripped on me a few times), it was freezing raining/snowing, the road is wet and there is spray from cars passing by and running over parts of the flare (making them all but impossible to reignite) and you have a much shorter time from each flare.
Keep in mind that if a flare goes out and there are 4 inches left of burnable material, how are you going to relight it? I'm certainly not going to hold a road flare in my hand and light it so closely to my fingers and at the time the only thing I had to light road flares was.....road flares. When you initially open them there is material exposed so you can light it with a striker, a striker is no longer an option when the flare has been burning for any period of time.
And it took me 3 minutes to light the first flare and another ~4 to get back in the car and call. Traffic isn't that bad on that road, but I like to be safe and let the 10 cars go by before I try to get in/out of the car.