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Did the shear valve work?

March 16, 2017

I was teaching a Class A/B UST operator training course in Portland, Oregon yesterday and one of the students said “Hey, did you hear about the gas station accident last night?” We looked it up online and shared and discussed the following tragic story

Man hit before gas station inferno crash has died

It’s a terrible story about a seemingly random accident that resulted in a fatality right before the driver struck dispenser. If you see the picture and watch the video in the link you’ll notice the dispenser basically explodes and the shear valve does not appear to have worked. Or did it? I’ve seen a few videos like this where the vehicle hit the dispenser so hard I have to wonder: are shear valves rated for high velocity impact? Or did this shear valve not work? Or did the fuel vapor above the shear valve catch fire?

Comments welcome.

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Comments

  1. Wonder if it was a single or double poppet shear valve?

    1. Ben Thomas says:

      I’m thinking single but the shear speed of the impact maybe vaporized the whole valve….