Luton Airport Car Park Fire

[Reformed Offlian]

In my school we wro...... No..

In cockney it's spel.... No..


I'll go with "Thank you. For some reason I can never remember which one it is when I come to write it".

Oh, come on! How are we supposed to start a whole new thread on "I'm not wrong because new orthography" if you're going to be all mature about this?!

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Oh, come on! How are we supposed to start a whole new thread on "I'm not wrong because new orthography" if you're going to be all mature about this?!

Sorry Kemo Sabe

 

[catsmate]

Plastic Tanks and fuel spillage, water spreading an oil fire.

Once the tank melts the fuel follows the path of gravity, and water only spreads the fire.

Do you ever do qny cooking? Same reason you cover an oil fire to smother it.

Ah, that brings back memories of Pr. LLoyd's first-year lab demo,"How to extinguish a beaker fire". Followed by the more spectacular "How [BI]not[/B] to extinguish a beaker fire".

 

[Foster Zygote]

Plastic Tanks and fuel spillage, water spreading an oil fire.

Once the tank melts the fuel follows the path of gravity, and water only spreads the fire.

Do you ever do qny cooking? Same reason you cover an oil fire to smother it.

It's also worth noting that some vehicles now have plastic oil sumps.

 

[Vixen]

Aaaaaaaand melty concrete takes it away. Honest to God, you just don't see some of the twists and turns coming.

Do look at the objective facts:

Temperature of a burning lithium car battery:

Fire ignition establishes that the cathode of the battery can catch fire. The burning lithium creates a metal fire existing at temperatures of 2,000 degrees Celsius/3632 degrees Fahrenheit. Attempting to douse the fire with water is inadvisable since this could lead to a hydrogen gas explosion!23 May 2019

Lithium-Ion Batteries and Electrical Fires - Envista Forensics

Temperature concrete will melt:

1200 Heating Temperature (°C) or more Concrete melting

Estimation of Heating Temperature for Fire-Damaged ... - NCBI

Believe your eyes, people.

 

[Vixen]

No. Instead of grasping at a poor analogy, why don't you do what I asked and point out where I committed an ad hominem against you. If you can do that, I'll report it to the moderators myself. But you can't, because your accusation was a lie.



So that's your argument, that both fires, in different buildings, with no doubt different initial conditions, didn't burn in exactly the same way, with exactly the same timeline? Seriously?

This is a pathetic attempt to put the burden of proof on me, knowing full well (or maybe not) that such a report would require detailed investigations of all aspects of both fires, and careful cross comparisons of the two. There are numerous reasons why one fire may spread faster than another. We are definitely not left with "the Luton fire must have started in something other than a diesel car" as the only logical conclusion.

Where you pondered on my level of misunderstanding.

 

[Vixen]

You're still just inventing details.

What type of car burns so fiercely? A modern car. Did you watch the YouTube video posted yesterday of a BMW X5 burning? If that had been under a roof so the heat was contained and reflected, do you imagine that intense fire would not have flashed over to other cars a couple of metres away in very short order? Of course it would.

What gives off noxious fumes? Plastics for one thing, and modern car are full of them.

You're still stuck on the fantasy idea the car you saw fall in a floor collapse must be the original car that caught light. You have no good reason to suppose it was.

Melted concrete? What?

Yes! It happens:

Heating Temperature (°C) Concrete Discoloration
300–600 Pink
600–950 Light gray
950–1200 Light yellow
1200 or more Concrete melting
1 more row•29 Nov 2019

Estimation of Heating Temperature for Fire-Damaged ... - NCBI

 

[Vixen]

Yes, that's literally every conspiracy theory ever. The Kennedy assassination wasn't like some other gunshot wounds or murder investigations. Apollo spacecraft and missions weren't like some Soviet spacecraft and missions. The collapse of buildings on 9/11 wasn't like other building collapses. The sinking of MS Estonia wasn't like some other ship sinking.



Correct. When a claimant isn't competent in the specialized knowledge required to knowledgeably assess the prevailing narrative, that claimant falls back to facile analogies and comparisons that beg the question of congruence. In many cases, the critic is in no better position to deploy specialized knowledge to question the congruence and dispel suspicion. So yes, it effectively amounts to shifting the burden of proof.

And in addition to begging the question and shifting the burden of proof, it's also an argument from silence. The answer to why X didn't unfold identically to Y may be difficult for both parties to determine. But that doesn't mean we default to a conspiratorial explanation.

If Vixen wants to argue that there's something strange about the Luton airport car park fire, the answer is to be found in that body of evidence, not in analogies or parallels naively inferred from dissimilar occurrences.

Strangely enough, the whole theory of Fire Prevention and Fire Fighting is based on...predictability. As based on research and historical examples.

In JayUtah's books this = conspiracy theory.

Hush, we can't have a good idea of what caused the Luton Car Park Fire because it is completely unique and unfathomable.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

"It happens" is not the same thing as "it happened". What about the rest of the post you didn't address? Did you watch either of the linked videos of modern ICE cars burning? When you have, let us know if you still have have any lingering doubts that such a fire in a confined space could quickly set fire to nearby cars with a similar proportion of plastic parts.

 

[Vixen]

It's not unconfirmed, it's literally confirmed by an official statement to have been a diesel Land Rover.


Parking garages have sloped floors. Land Rovers have composite fuel tanks. Once the tank melts, diesel will spill out.


No, sorry. But the lights being on doesn't indicate that the engine is running. It may be, but pointing out the running lights are on indicates nothing about whether the engine is running or not. If it was running, however, that means that the fuel pump is also running, which means that a rupture in the fuel delivery system would still be spraying fuel, feeding the fire.


You do know that Li-ion batteries aren't mounted on the left, despite what the sorts of people who comment on Daily Mail articles might assert.


Again, I refer you to this video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4IObb6...Q2FyIGZpcmU=


How shortly? According to the fire chief, they arrived on scene about ten minutes after the first 999 call.

Here's another video, of an Audi A5, also not available with anything other than gasoline or diesel engine. At the start of the video, the car is burning similarly to the video from the Luton garage. Firefighters begin extinguishing the blaze four minutes later, by which time the car has been fully consumed by the fire.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TJJSf80UZhI&


Was there a mighty wind blowing through the garage to clear away all the smoke? You do realize that the open structure of the parking garage, necessary to prevent the accumulation of carbon monoxide, is actually a problem with fire, because it lets in more oxygen to feed the flames. The open structure actually works against your argument.


Again, imagine a car fire, like the above videos, spreading to other vehicles, and then having an hour to spread throughout hundreds of cars.


That's like asking someone to explain how one little cigarette can burn down a whole house.

Your supposition about wind and ventilation is incorrect. One reason the Liverpool ECHO car park fire was so intense (but not as intense as the Luton one!) is because it was a closed structure.

See here from the Merseyside Fire Brigade Report into the Liverpool Fire citing Building Regulations (2005)

1.2 Building Regulations
In Approved Document B, Volume 2 (buildings other than dwelling houses) 2010,
section 11.2 gives the following general principles for buildings used for parking cars:

a. The fire load is well defined; and
b. Where the car park is well ventilated, there is low probability of fire spread from
one floor to another
11.3 gives the following requirements to conform to the definition of an open sided car
park:
a. there should not be any basement storeys;
b. each storey should be naturally ventilated by permanent openings at each car
parking level, having an aggregate vent area not less than 1/20th of the floor
area at that level, of which at least half (1/40th) should be equally provided
between two opposing walls;

Elsewhere it notes that the CHEAPEST structure should be fire resistant for one hour.

the
cheapest construction material that would comply with fire resistance of 1 hour under
the Building Regulations 1965.
However, the document noted that if fire resistance requirements were removed, then
a steel frame construction would be cheaper. It states in its summary, “The
experimental work carried out…..confirms the fact that an outbreak of fire,
within a single parked car, is unlikely to result in uncontrollable fire spread in
the car park or in serious damage to the structure of the building.”

https://www.bafsa.org.uk/wp-content...er/2018/12/Merseyside-FRS-Car-Park-Report.pdf

Yes, sure, cars then were smaller and parking spaces haven't necessarily increased in size proportionately but I don't think size of car or parking bays is relevant here as the offending vehicle was in an open space outside the bays.

Here's the thing: the whole thing at Luton was uncontrollable within fifty minutes!

Hello? Ground control to Major Tom? Are we grokking yet?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Hush, we can't have a good idea of what caused the Luton Car Park Fire because it is completely unique and unfathomable.

We know what caused the Luton fire. It was a diesel Range Rover that caught light.

Since in your world that is unconfirmed and only one other car fire has ever happened, I can see you might be puzzled, but the rest of the world moves on, and you can catch up those six steps in due course when a full report is published.

 

[catsmate]

Do look at the objective facts:

Temperature of a burning lithium car battery:




Temperature concrete will melt:



Estimation of Heating Temperature for Fire-Damaged ... - NCBI

Believe your eyes, people.

Repetitive, irrelevant, nonsense.

The fire started in a diesel vehicle, and spread.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Here's the thing: the whole thing at Luton was uncontrollable within fifty minutes!

Watch one of the car fire videos suggested. They don't take fifty minutes. More like five. You just sound silly implying 50 mins is a short time in a vehicle fire.

 

[Mojo]

Elsewhere it notes that the CHEAPEST structure should be fire resistant for one hour.

[...]

Here's the thing: the whole thing at Luton was uncontrollable within fifty minutes!

Attempt to conflate the amount of time for which a structure should be resistant with the amount of time taken for a fire to become uncontrollable noted.

 

[Vixen]

Watch one of the car fire videos suggested. They don't take fifty minutes. More like five. You just sound silly implying 50 mins is a short time in a vehicle fire.

Read the Merseyside Fire Report carefully. It draws on careful and extensive research in 1965 into car park fires. It clearly says that the cheapest of structures will contain a fire for at least one hour.

In 1968, The Ministry of Technology and Fire Offices’ Committee Joint Fire Research
Organisation produced Fire Note No.10, “Fire and Car-Park Buildings”. This document
was the result of a research experiment, exploring the likelihood of fire spread from
one vehicle to another, which would, in turn, determine the fire resistance
requirements of the structures. The structures were classed as ‘light storage’ and had,
up until then, been mainly constructed from reinforced concrete, which was the
cheapest construction material that would comply with fire resistance of 1 hour under
the Building Regulations 1965.

So we have a bog standard diesel car less flammable than a petrol. OK so it gives off plastics which tends to melt rather than spread with black heavy fumes of hydrocarbons. The Fire Report confirms that fire is unlikely to spread from vehicle to vehicle in parked cars. The fact of an electrical fault AND a ruptured fuel pump AND the fuel burning are three separate elemtns coming together, including a fourth: that of the burning fuel draining to lower floors.

Well, if the Liverpool fire was a Range Rover with aforementioned problems then the homily that 'Once in History is a Tragedy, Twice is a Farce', becomes true.

Yet the Liverpool fire took two hours to become out of control, despite those four faults.

Stop pointing out fires on youtube of burning cars. Nobody is claiming ICE cars do not burn.

Think of your nearest parking area. Do you really think that if you drop a lighted cigarette under one car that soon - WHOOSH! - the entire car park is aflame within three-quarters of an hour? It doesn't happen.

 

[Andy_Ross]

It was started by a burning diesel car.

It has been confirmed by the fire service.

 

[GlennB]

Your supposition about wind and ventilation is incorrect. One reason the Liverpool ECHO car park fire was so intense (but not as intense as the Luton one!) is because it was a closed structure.

Nope. And quoting the regulations doesn't determine the nature of a particular structure.

The following is from The Liverpool Echo

eta: link

[imgw=500]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=48342&stc=1&d=1698776554[/imgw]

 

[Thermal]

Do look at the objective facts:

Temperature of a burning lithium car battery:




Temperature concrete will melt:



Estimation of Heating Temperature for Fire-Damaged ... - NCBI

Believe your eyes, people.

OK, so have you crunched the numbers on what temperature arises as you move away from the theorized burning battery? Like, how long would the concrete have to be exposed to the burning temperature to raise the concrete (at whatever thickness and area it covered) to actually melt it as you propose?

I'm sure a qualified engineer will happen along to opine on this puppy shortly. I'm only thinking in terms of max temperature versus radiating/convecting temps and basics like that.

Eta: I can hold a match burning at 451F a fraction of an inch from my fingertip, for example. Takes some doing for that max temperature to get to stuff its not in direct contact with and expand across a wide area

 

[Mojo]

Do you really think that if you drop a lighted cigarette under one car that soon - WHOOSH! - the entire car park is aflame within three-quarters of an hour?

Can you link to a post where someone has claimed that, please?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The Fire Report confirms that fire is unlikely to spread from vehicle to vehicle in parked cars...

Parked 1965 UK cars. Significantly smaller than modern cars, and with entirely steel body panels and steel fuel tanks. It's tedious that you won't let that significant information through your cognitive filter but I guess the dead horse isn't going to flog itself, so it's up to you.