Personal Fire Extingisher (While Driving)

[Mettius]

Can a driver (or gunner or other passenger) use a personal fire extinguisher to attempt to put out a fire while still in the car in their crew position?

Or is this something that can only be used by a pedestrian?

[swordtart]

As long as you spend the firing actions anyone can fire their personal fire extinguisher (indeed if I was on fire I'd have everyone fire their personal fire extinguisher rather than take any other action).

I believe that a passenger can sit with an extinguisher ready (assuming they are not firing a personal weapon). For anyone who is using a weapon, as a PFE is a two handed weapon, it must be carried slung and it will take two firing actions to ready the extinguisher (i.e. get it out) and another action to fire it. You can start the event with an extinguisher readied, but if you fired a weapon* you would need to take another two actions to re-ready the PFE. Readying hand weapons takes one or two firing action as well, so you can spend a lot of useful time swapping stuff about. If your driver never fires a weapon (including DWs) they I would rule that he can keep his PFE readied when just driving.

Note personal fire extinguishers are just that, you can't fire someone else's unless you take it off them (or their body) which will probably take more firing actions than you have before you burn to death.

This is why foam grenades can be popular, they can be removed from BV or ABV and fired as a single firing action.

Nothing is stated AFAIK about how long it takes to "drop" a ready weapon. I tend to assume it takes a firing action to holster or sling a weapon. I also believe that you in some circumstances that you can ready a weapon without having to holster the other (i.e. you have a one-handed weapon ready and wish to ready a second). I also allow you to carry (not fire) a weapon one-handed and make it ready at 1 action less than if it were holstered or slung. For pistols this means you can immediately start firing but for two handed weapons it takes firing action rather than two to ready a held weapon, but this is just my own rule.

*You don't have to "ready" vehicular weapons as far as I can tell, but hand weapons take 1-2 turns to ready (CWC 2.5 p66). I had always assumed this is completed as firing actions for each turn but strictly it states in terms of "turn" only and so by the rules you could fire a pistol while un-holstering a second. Since this would allow drawing a pair of pistols in the same turn, I could see this as valid but I am going to stick with my interpretation requiring actual firing actions and treat a double draw as an exception. Obviously two-handed items require both hands so you can only unsling one once you have both hands free anyway.

[Mettius]

Thanks Swordtart. That makes sense. And I think I'll also go with your interpretation based on firing actions vs. strict "Turns".

[juris]

Agree. Hand out PFEs to bus passengers. A driver of a pure ram car with a PFE is a staple.

Originally Posted by swordtart

As long as you spend the firing actions anyone can fire their personal fire extinguisher (indeed if I was on fire I'd have everyone fire their personal fire extinguisher rather than take any other action).

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