Fire Dept. Crashes Our OC Event

Things arrived smoothly the day before. Equipment, liquid nitrogen tanks — all eight of them — and the competitors. Everyone was definitely gearing up and getting prepared for the event that would occur today.

Unfortunately, things would get worst before it got better. One of the building owners didn’t quite like the way we had eight giant tanks stored in our offices, and essentially told us that he would shut the entire event down — even though we offered to store the tanks outside. Clearly he was threatened by the size of our large, long, vessels.

Things were looking pretty grim for the competitors that were here. No matter, we decided to push ahead with it anyway — we’re cool like that.

Come today, we moved everything outside. All the tables were setup, and we pitched some tents and got everything going. The competitors were ready and pumped up to come over to our offices to kick start the event, but our pesky building owner came by again to put yet another damper on the competition.

"This is a fire hazard," he exclaimed.

Interestingly, liquid nitrogen displaces oxygen, and we all know what a necessary component oxygen is to sustain fires. In fact, all our giant liquid nitrogen tanks were gigantic fire extinguishers, slowly consuming the oxygen that was in the air.

We attempted to explain the situation. After what seemed like an eternity of arguing, the building manager decided to call the owner of the building, and eventually told us that the fire department would come over to "extinguish" the situation — not that there was ever a fire hazard to begin with!

Fortunately, one of our competitors, Jake Crimmins from team Ironmods was there to answer all of the safety and technical questions from the fire department. Jake informed the guys in yellow that everything was safe. Working with liquid nitrogen since birth, Jake clearly knew what he was talking about.

The liquid nitrogen tanks have several safety precautions to keep dangerous situations at bay. First, there is a 22 PSI pressure valve that’s constantly and slowly releasing excess pressure. If things get really hairy, and for some unlikely situation the tanks heat up and build too much pressure, there is a 400 PSI blow off valve.

Jake also told the fire department, when asked, that the tanks should be stored next to a wall. This is of course done to prevent them from tipping over in case of an earthquake.

Clearly, the fire fighters were testing our knowledge in liquid nitrogen safety, and in no time, the fire fighters were pleased with Jake’s answers. With that, the building owner apologized to us for what he thought would be the next Chernobyl.

Overclocking begins! Next update coming soon!

Update: Update 2 now available. Fierce emotions and animal-like behavior run rampant in the competition!