This article sets out to show that the standards' impasse we are experiencing in the field of power and distribution transformers is due to the fact that standards committees are still asking the old askarel questions: ‘Is it flammable*or non-flammable?’ Instead, in the context of the possibility of fire causation by a dielectric fluid, for both practical and criteriological reasons, the question should be whether the liquid is actually capable of maintaining a transient flame and thus capable of propagating a fire. If we follow the argument that ‘non-flammable’ should be replaced by the much more relevant notion of ‘non-propagating’ — and the test results shown make it difficult not to agree — then we must set in motion the necessary procedures at IEC and CENELEC level.