Luton Airport Car Park Fire

[Jack by the hedge]

No need to rely on my summing up.

You could get that on a tee shirt.

Nobody here would rely on your attempt to sum up some piece of technical writing. They might comment on your attempt to claim it supported some conclusion or other, when it doesn't.

 

[Vixen]

The word highlighted is loaded, just as you intended it to be.

The fire spread dramatically, as you know perfectly well. It was an inferno. You've seen the photos and videos, so don't pretend you haven't.

If you're about to claim that the cctv footage of a car falling while a number of floors slabs collapse involved the original car then please don't bother. The fire started on level 3 and that cctv was the ground level. A screencap of that event was posted yesterday.

Is it officially sourced or is it yet again something that has come off social media? If from a reputable reliable source, such as the BBC or Sky News, please can you link to where it confirms it is an official CCTV footage of the fire. It probably is but given the permutations for misinformation we need a confirmed source.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Still having trouble grasping logic...? Try this exercise. Have a look at the following two reports and without scrolling down further consider what the headline is saying. Both of these sources are UK national news outlets, one being the BBC, UK-state funded broadcaster.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12618033/started-London-Luton-car-park-fire-moment.html


https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-67082443


So? Have you had a chance to look and reflect on the main message?

Clue: remember what I said about ambiguous 'could-type' headlines...? No?


Answer: Not one reputable national newspaper has said that the car pictured is the car that started the fire. So no, it is not at all definitive. The Fire Brigade did not know for sure what started the blaze as of the point you and Full Fact began browbeating us that it was 'confirmed' to be a diesel based solely on a press release that actually does not confirm it at all but states: “We don’t believe it was an electric vehicle,” Andrew Hopkinson, chief fire officer for Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, said.

“It’s believed to be diesel-powered, at this stage all subject to verification. And then that fire has quickly and rapidly spread.”

...which you and Full Fact have decided is a new press statement but is in fact taken from exactly the same one as above and précised into plain English by Jenny in Communications because in her degree in Media Studies that is what she was taught to do: put it into simple English for the plebs.

In other words, the picture of the blazing car was one uploaded on social media and we have no way of knowing whether or not it is even authentic. Not one official source has named a Jaguar Land Rover vehicle either and nor has any official source stepped in to deny or confirm it.


In case it still is not clear: there is no confirmation whatsoever as to what caused the fire.

Oh, and by the way you claimed earlier that diesel cars needed a flame to start ignition as in a petrol car spark. A diesel engine starts because of compression causing the diesel to heat and this is what starts the engine.

A steam boiler doesn't use compression to burn diesel fuel

 

[Andy_Ross]

Is it your opinion that a diesel fire could buckle a steel reinforced frame within a short period of time, as in a typical multi-level car park?

Yes.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Show me the second press statement and the actual attribution to a person.

Moving the goalposts. You're creating a vexatious artificial requirement that the information has to be provided by the fire brigade in a specific format you approve, otherwise you won't consider it.

You're just playing a silly game of Simon Says to avoid the truth.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Is it officially sourced or is it yet again something that has come off social media?

The fire brigade's own website is not social media.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Is it your opinion that a diesel fire could buckle a steel reinforced frame within a short period of time, as in a typical multi-level car park?

Yes.

 

[Vixen]

Is that meant to explain something?

You said to even get to temperatures above 700°C artificially you need to be in a laboratory. (This was back before you learned that welding involves melting the metal at the join.) Well, you absolutely don't need to be in a laboratory to achieve 700°C and above; there are routine tasks which do so, but what does your qualifier "artificially" add to the claim?

...within the context of the deformations that Dr Westermann was talking about...

 

[Vixen]

The fire brigade's own website is not social media.

So I take it the answer is no. If not please provide an updated press release that confirms the vehicle that started the blaze was a diesel-only vehicle.

My stance is that the webpage is simply an abridged 'plain English' version of what Mr. Hopkinson said in his sole press statement in this matter.

 

[JayUtah]

So I take it the answer is no. If not please provide an updated press release that confirms the vehicle that started the blaze was a diesel-only vehicle.

My stance is that the webpage is simply an abridged 'plain English' version of what Mr. Hopkinson said in his sole press statement in this matter.

No, you don't get to keep rejecting sources that plainly say what you don't want said.

 

[junkshop]

Vixen,

I'll take your lack of response as an admission that no, you can't provide any citations for your claims.

 

[Andy_Ross]

So I take it the answer is no. If not please provide an updated press release that confirms the vehicle that started the blaze was a diesel-only vehicle.

My stance is that the webpage is simply an abridged 'plain English' version of what Mr. Hopkinson said in his sole press statement in this matter.

Yes, but you are deranged.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

From the looks of it, people have made up their minds and no one agrees with you.

On a site where people could argue for days about the colour of an orange, she does seem to be the one point on which absolutely everyone else can agree.

 

[Mojo]

The fire brigade's own website is not social media.

There must be some reason it can be dismissed, it's written in clear, unambiguous English and says something Vixen doesn't want it to say.

 

[zooterkin]

So I take it the answer is no. If not please provide an updated press release that confirms the vehicle that started the blaze was a diesel-only vehicle.

My stance is that the webpage is simply an abridged 'plain English' version of what Mr. Hopkinson said in his sole press statement in this matter.

You might want to adopt a more comfortable stance, since there is no support for that one.

 

[zooterkin]

Is it officially sourced or is it yet again something that has come off social media? If from a reputable reliable source, such as the BBC or Sky News, please can you link to where it confirms it is an official CCTV footage of the fire. It probably is but given the permutations for misinformation we need a confirmed source.

It is from an official source, the Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service. You have no valid reason whatsoever for assuming they would publish lies. What bizarre logic would suggest that the BBC or Sky are more reliable than the fire brigade themselves?

 

[Mojo]

Is it your opinion that a diesel fire could buckle a steel reinforced frame within a short period of time, as in a typical multi-level car park?

I think part of the problem may be that Vixen thinks that if a fire starts in a diesel vehicle then it's a "diesel fire". It's a sort of magical thinking in which the nature of something is determined and fixed by its origin.

 

[Orphia Nay]

The incident will still be under Fire Brigade investigation so will likely be exempt from any FOI request. The Liverpool Arena car park fire took the Fire Brigade at least four months to compile the statutory report. Likewise any police investigation, who will take their point of information from the Fire Brigade. Given the massive difference between the Liverpool Fire and the Luton one, I suspect we will be waiting at least six months for the report to come out. Maybe we should all meet up to discuss the matter in Spring.

The major differences between Liverpool and Luton are:

• Five years on, there is a much bigger proportion of EVs, PEVs and MEvs.
• Liverpool Arena car park is used for entertainment crowds, Luton, airport passengers.
• Liverpool Arena is much much quieter than Luton.
• The Luton Fire comes within days of a major conflict - detectives have to rule out terrorism.
• Luton is known for Tommy Robinson far right anti-Muslim clashes in the past.
• After the Hamas assault 7 Oct in Israel, detectives have to consider political activism.
• Police have to consider current Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion activism, 'We hate cars!'
• The fire brigade has to pinpoint precisely the cause and spread of the fire.
• Whilst at face value it may look 'accidental', they have to be sure.
• This is because they will have to look at security from all angles.
• The issue of EV's and PHEV's being a catalyst owing to their lithium batteries.
• In the case of crime, Luton is on the M1, has a major airport, has a car park, easy for any criminal, activist or terrorist to get away.
• The sheer number of stakeholders: the airport authorities who own the site, the architects, the builders, the insurers, private litigants, the government.

The idea that we already have this information is laughable and there is no way you can get it via an FOI request before the report comes out.

You said you want to know the make and model of the car.

Now, faced with doing something to find out, you inflate your requests.

I can see this is just a game to you.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

As I recall, sprinklers were a recommendation after the Liverpool Arena car park fire. Water on a burning EV might make things worse though now that they are a significant percentage of cars in a car park.

Nope. The more water the better.

As you might expect, water puts out lithium battery fires, a fact that I can attest to from personal experience. I am charging a lithium-polymer battery right now, and have a bucket of water next to me in case it catches fire. It's also in a 'lipo-safe' fibreglass bag to contain the bits while it burns. The reason I am taking these precautions is that I am attempting to revive a 'dead' battery that has been over-discharged. I have done this many times before without incidence, but better safe than sorry!

 

[JayUtah]

Nope. The more water the better.

As you might expect, water puts out lithium battery fires...

I suspect Vixen's concerns arise from the notion that it's a self-oxidizing reaction. The normal precaution against using water on Class C combustibles doesn't really apply to EVs. In some contexts, the battery might be part of a larger electrical assembly that requires proper retardant. (This is the case in the Boeing 787, which I worked on.) In other cases, you don't care about the electrical properties of the combustibles because while the battery is in full thermal runaway it's not powering anything.

More importantly, it's not just the battery that burns. The scary part is when the burning battery ignites materials around it that fall into classes A or B. Those are the materials that are extinguished or prevented from igniting with a water deluge. As Mojo noted, Vixen seems to have it in her mind that only one kind of thing burns at a time in a structure fire.