One blazing July afternoon, Afshin came home from a high-speed test drive, brakes red hot, tank full of race fuel.
A technician, shop owner, and lifelong racer, he started tuning engines when he was sixteen. His pride and joy is a Volkswagen R32 fully upgraded from bumper to bumper: turbo, transmission, differential, brakes, suspension, seats, and a custom triple-feed fuel system.
“I spent a lot of money building it,” he says. “I figured it’s better to buy a good fire extinguisher than to call the insurance company and tell them my $110,000 car is on fire.”
That decision would end up saving far more than just his car.
“I pulled into the underground parking garage, and suddenly I smelled fuel, stronger than ever,” he recalls. “Then from the corner of the hood, smoke came out so thick I couldn’t see past it.”
He popped the hood, and flames exploded upward. “The whole engine bay was on fire. Huge flames, five feet tall,” he says.
He lived in a brand-new high-rise apartment building with four levels of underground parking. He was on the lowest level, surrounded by nearly a hundred vehicles.
“At that moment, I wasn’t worried about my car,” he says. “I was worried about the people living above me. My car was on fire with a full tank of race fuel. What’s going to happen to the cars around me? What’s going to happen to all those people?”
He raced for the HalGuard extinguisher mounted in his trunk, but the wiring to the electric latch had already melted. The car was locked tight.
“I had to get back inside, flip the front seat forward, then the back seat, and reach into the trunk,” he says. “Meanwhile, the whole engine bay is burning.”
When he finally pulled the extinguisher free, the fire was so intense he was standing inside the flames. “It wasn’t the liquid fuel burning, it was the fumes. I was literally surrounded by fire,” he recalls.
He pointed the nozzle at the base of the flames and pulled the trigger.
“As soon as I did, it was like a miracle. The fire instantly, I mean literally instantly, vanished,” he says. “It was like someone flipped a switch and took all the oxygen out of the air. I just stood there, shocked. Where did the fire go?”
Against all odds, the damage was minimal. A melted ground wire, a few hoses, and a bit of insulation. “I fixed it in one day. Eight hours of work, and the car was back on the road,” he says.
In the past, Afshin had used dry chemical extinguishers, but the HalGuard was in a different league. “This H3R extinguisher is amazing because it didn’t damage any electronics or sensors in the engine bay,” he says. “I didn’t even have to wash it. There was no chemical residue, nothing.”
But he’ll never forget how it performed when it mattered most. “This little bottle saved my car, my building, and probably hundreds of lives,” he says.
“You spend so much money on your car, but your life matters more. When things go wrong, this H3R extinguisher pays for itself a million times over.”
—Afshin Fattahi, Vancouver, B.C.
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