A road tunnel in Norway has been closed – by a lorry-load of burning cheese.
About 27 tonnes of caramelised brown goat cheese – a delicacy known as Brunost – caught light as it was being driven through the Brattli Tunnel at Tysfjord, northern Norway, last week.
The fire raged for five days and smouldering toxic gases were slowing the recovery operation, officials said.
The tunnel – which is said to be badly damaged – is likely to remain closed for several weeks, they added…
Police officer Viggo Berg said the high concentration of fat and sugar in the cheese made it burn “almost like petrol if it gets hot enough”…
Kjell Bjoern Vinje, of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, said it was the first time he could remember cheese catching fire on Norwegian roads…”I didn’t know that brown cheese burns so well,” he said.
Cripes. There goes the price of gjetost, this winter. Gjetost is the name most often used in North America for Brunost. And it is unusual – and delicious.
Who knew it was flammable?
Don’t know what I would do without this information.
PU! who burnt the cheese?!!!
“Burning” = Exothermal chemical reaction involving oxygen, so any fat, sugar, metal, … can burn, given enough oxygen and a high enough temperature….
Examples:
* Fat people (like me) burn much better on a funeral pyre!
* Try sprinkling a whiff of fine metal file-dust over a candle next time you happen to have both…
* Acetylene explodes (=rapid burning) from a very low to a very high concentration in the atmosphere… Try it out with a (very small) plastic container
* The colours in fireworks are metals (Try burning some whiskey in a copper pot)
And I can go on for hours…
Perhaps goat cheese is the new tar sands.
Rush Limbaugh would burn for weeks
Is that what was in the Menorah candles we had last year? They are still burning. often wondered why.
Obviously a slow news day at Dvorak Uncensored.
Hey, I take my cheese stories very serious.
Contribute something interesting.
Kind of touchy today, aren’t we?
I was told only yesterday that stale cheese makes a good fire lighter.
I still want to know why (some) goat cheese, like that depicted above is brown!
I’d say it came out of the wrong part of the goat.
All the best stuff is flammable.
Don’t mock the Brunost! This is staple food for the brave, taxed and slaved Norwegians. And now it burns, inside a tunnel….
A tragedy!
Just about anything high in fat, oil, or grease will burn unless it is synthetic silicon based product. I think mythbusters once used some salami or some such as a rocket fuel. It worked pretty well.