[gecko]

    Are there any safety issues associated with hauling a bucket of diesel
    up a staircase?

It's flammable and slippery. Wear boots, and I suggest this is a good day to quit smoking.

    I know it's not as volatile as gasoline but it's still not exactly
    the most fire-safe substance. Are they literally 5-gallon pails,
    or are they sealed containers?

They are open buckets we store the cleaning supplies for the fish tank in. And also now gasoline.

[meaty]

A million times this.

Diesel is extremely dangerous stuff. I nearly blew myself up a few years ago by not cleaning out a diesel tank with detergent properly that I was welding. Diesel residue vapourised and went boom. Fortunately there wasn't enough in it to create a large explosion but it required new underpants.

To add to that, my only car accident was due to having diesel on my shoes. My foot slipped off the brake and I rear ended some poor guy.

[js2]

After Hurricane Andrew, my father and I needed to siphon gasoline from one of our cars to use in our generator. Lacking a proper container, we siphoned the gas into a 5 gallon plastic water cooler bottle. The gasoline promptly ate through the bottle's seam and spilled out, dissolving a good size chunk of our asphalt driveway. Lesson learned: use only approved storage containers for gasoline.

[mseebach2]

> They are open buckets

So one guy slips and there's five gallons of diesel covering what I assume is the escape route of a NYC high rise?

[alexfoo]

Indeed, can't think of it as anything other than irresponsible, bordering on downright dangerous.

Hacking software is one thing, but when that goes wrong it just leaves crashed servers, unresponsive web apps and 404/500 errors.

And, before someone mentinos it, hauling diesel up stairs to keep a hospital generator going (as mentioned in another story) is a whole different situation. Patients are a bit more important than a bunch of servers. But you'd still evacuate all non-essential staff and patients if you were doing that given that it presents a significant danger if something were to go wrong; especially with the emergency services already dealing with a huge workload.

[Fjolle]

It's diesel. You'd have to heat it before you would be able to ignite it.

But yes :)

[AdamN]

Exactly. You can't light diesel on fire with just a match. You need more heat or pressure. However, the burn from gasoline or diesel on your body is intense. I was once filling an old junker with gas when it spurted out from that tank and all over me. At first it was funny and felt nice and cold on the body. Then the burning sensation started and it took a solid 25 minutes in a cold shower to calm the sting.

[andyjohnson0]

Ignition isn't the only risk. Diesel causes severe skin irritation. I'm not sure about the effects of inhaling fumes from split uncombusted diesel, but it can't be good for a person's lungs.

Potential hazmat incident.

[TylerE]

Diesel doesn't vaporize to any significant degree at temperatures experienced on Earth.

[gadders]

Good on you for getting up and working to keeps things running.

[eliajf]

I would highly recommend no longer using those buckets for fish tank cleaning. At least not for putting water back in the tank. :-)