How dangerous can helium be?

So with all the fun I had this weekend I kind of forgot about an interesting little event that could have made the weekend much more different. You see Saturday morning I meet up with a bunch of the people from the bike club for the usual 9:00 am ride. Well it was rainy and kind generally unpleasant out when we all meet near an outdoor stage at one of the lakes. It was a bit unusual this Saturday, because there were plenty of other people down there as well. From what I could gather there was a charity walk for Alzheimer's...or I guess that's what the "walk for Als" on the t-shirts meant, we will just forget about proper spelling of AlZheimer's (it's the US, they are allowed to do that kind of thing).

Anyway this being a charity walk all the usual requirements were there, tents, table and plenty of balloons...I wonder how many balloons they have at walks for the environment? Anyway, having helium balloons is the only way to go, so there was obviously a helium tank on hand. And that's where things get interesting. As we waited for some of the club members to come out of the washrooms we were hiding from the wind near some of the buildings on a large cement walkway. All of a sudden I heard a very distinctive sound, a heavy metal cylinder striking cement forcefully. Those of you who have dealt with compressed gas can guess what that was, the helium cylinder had fallen over.

Now before I go further, here is a link to what a compressed gas cylinder looks like. These things are big and have a huge amount of pressure in them (around 4000 psi, a car tire is about 40 psi, a bike tire gets as high as 160 psi and the air around us is about 15 psi). Because of this pressure they are highly dangerous, essentially they become a bomb if the structural integrity of the cylinder is compromised. With this in mind the cylinders are very well made, in fact there is only one known weakness to the cylinders, that is the regulator, the way that you get the gas out.

Now when this particular gas cylinder fell over the next thing that I heard was a hissing sound! Not good! The regulator was attached, and took some of the impact from the fall. Oh, we were directly in the path of the regulator, should it have taken off. Honestly the whole thing shocked me so much that I barely moved when this happened, I panicked, not the adrenaline pumping panic that is useful, I froze cold, as in: "This is it, it was a nice ride". Fortunately the cylinder didn't blow, and the gas leak was stopped. I then saw a few people whom I assume were responsible for the cylinder lifting it back up and standing it once again near the building. I rolled over and told them that they really should have the tank secured so that it couldn't fall over. Trying to impress upon them that had it snapped the regulator off the tank would have been found somewhere on the other side of the lake. I got the feeling that they didn't really care. I should have tried harder but we were rolling out on the ride and I figure that maybe a little Darwinism is a good thing from time to time...so long as I don't die because of the stupidity of some other fool.

Anyway I figured I would share that little story with you. Thinking back that could have really changed how my weekend played out. It's also funny to think back to my post about the safety warning on my coffee grinder power cord, yet how much safety training was involved in letting these fools use a helium cylinder?