Luton Airport Car Park Fire

[zooterkin]

A modern car's chassis is made of carbon steel.


An EV car's chassis is made of carbon fibre or alloys

Make your mind up. (And then provide a source.)

 

[zooterkin]

I am not entirely convinced by the argument that car park fires in diesels were less frequent in the old days because cars were smaller and used fewer plastics.

Plastics whilst noxious aren't particularly flammable. For a plastic petrol tank to melt it would need to get to the relevant temperature first. Would that be within ten minutes? <shrug>

What is this compulsion you have to proudly display your ignorance?

 

[zooterkin]

No, it hasn't been confirmed. It is 'believed to be a diesel...at this stage...subject to verification'.

No amount of plain english speak for the plebs changes that perspective.

Do you really not understand what Andrew Hopkinson said in his one and only press release?

Why do you persist in ignoring an official statement from the fire service?

 

[GlennB]

...
It is rare that I misunderstand anything.

The laughing dogs are all exhausted and having a lie-down.

 

[zooterkin]

To allow time for evacuation. Right. So, how long after the fire began did the Luton structure fail?

'Major incident' called within fifty minutes of the first call to 999. All firemen evacuated.

Once again, a non sequitur. Try again.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Maybe for some makes of cars but have you seen the size and weights for some US coupes?

ETA: classic cars are very popular in Finland. If you go to Turku city centre on a spring or summer weekend you can see any number just cruising around.

https://www.instagram.com/old.cars.finland/

But the report was about 1860s cars in the UK.

Not the USA or Finland

Anyway, it was a diesel car that started the fire, it has been confirmed by the fire service

 

[Andy_Ross]

No, it hasn't been confirmed. It is 'believed to be a diesel...at this stage...subject to verification'.

No amount of plain english speak for the plebs changes that perspective.

Do you really not understand what Andrew Hopkinson said in his one and only press release?

The announcement that it was a diesel car postdates the initial statement.

It was a diesel car.

Ask the fire service

 

[P.J. Denyer]

What's that got to do with cars in the UK?

"Look, Squirrel!!"

 

[Andy_Ross]

I am not entirely convinced by the argument that car park fires in diesels were less frequent in the old days because cars were smaller and used fewer plastics.

Plastics whilst noxious aren't particularly flammable. For a plastic petrol tank to melt it would need to get to the relevant temperature first. Would that be within ten minutes? <shrug>

Plastics are very flammable.

Nobody is saying fires were less frequent, but they had less fuel and the cars were smaller and further apart with very little flammable material on the outside for a fire to spread to.

Anyway it has been confirmed that it was a diesel car that started the fire.

Carthago delenda est

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Just to point out that it was the plastic core in aluminium skinned cladding that lead to the rapid and lethal spread of the Grenfell Tower fire.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

'Major incident' called within fifty minutes of the first call to 999. All firemen evacuated.

Neither of those things sounds like the building collapsing. Do you know when the building failed? Do you know for how long it was rated to withstand a fire?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Time taken for the fire to be officially 'out of control'.

Notwithstanding the seemingly made-up concept of 'officially out of control', how does the time taken to reach your threshold of severity define how intense the fire became? I venture to suggest it doesn't.

 

[Mojo]

What's that got to do with cars in the UK?

It was an airport car park, so obviously it would have a lot of cars from overseas.

 

[malbui]

It was an airport car park, so obviously it would have a lot of cars from overseas.

And Estonian trucks full of highly flammable stolen Russian technology.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Maybe for some makes of cars but have you seen the size and weights for some US coupes?

British and US cars were even more starkly different sizes in the '60s than they are now now. The comparison is almost comical. A mid-'60s Chevy was half as long again as an Austin 1100 and well over double the weight, and those aren't extreme examples, just the most popular cars of the time.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Do you really not understand what Andrew Hopkinson said in his one and only press release?

Do you think you can sustain your Simon-Says fiction that only Hopkinson may ever speak for the fire brigade?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I am not entirely convinced by the argument that car park fires in diesels were less frequent in the old days because cars were smaller and used fewer plastics.

Plastics whilst noxious aren't particularly flammable. For a plastic petrol tank to melt it would need to get to the relevant temperature first. Would that be within ten minutes? <shrug>

Car park fires in diesels were uncommon in the old days because diesel cars were uncommon. We already covered that. Try to remember.

Have you looked at any of those modern car fire videos yet? Do you imagine any plastic parts of those cars survived intact for ten minutes when the vehicles are almost entirely consumed by fire in half that time? Don't be silly.

 

[Matthew Best]

It is rare that I misunderstand anything.

How can you be sure?

 

[Foster Zygote]

What? My feelings are not hurt. It is my sense of logic that is outraged by the idea that a person thinks they can win a debate by low blows.

I quote again the post that you characterize as containing "low blows":

I wonder if Vixen has been proceeding under the misapprehension that all the structural damage to the parking garage was caused by the one vehicle alone. The way she's been arguing, I'm not sure she understands that the initial vehicle fire was just the ignition point for the greater fire. She also doesn't seem to understand that while diesel may have a higher ignition temperature, it contains about 18% more energy by volume. She seems to have seized on the fact that diesel doesn't ignite quite as easily as gasoline, and inferred that it is much less energetic when it burns, which is simply not the case.

You're simply demonstrating that you feel personally insulted simply by having your understanding of the subjects about which you argue so vociferously even questioned. By continuing to insist that anything in the above quotation is even remotely related to an ad hominem attack, or a "low blow", you're just showing that you are pathologically incapable of admitting error, and that when you can't respond with a cogent defense you resort to playing the victim.

It is rare that I misunderstand anything.

Your threads are overflowing with your misunderstanding.

You thought that the tail lights being on indicated that the engine was running. This is false. You didn't realize that if the engine was running, that made the risk of the fire spreading even greater, because fuel was still being pumped to the engine.

You clearly have no concept of how violently a hydrocarbon fueled vehicle can burn, or at least you didn't until you were shown videos of such fires, which you have ignored.

You've gone from claiming that the fire destroyed the building within ten minutes, to claiming that it was declared a major fire after almost an hour.

You thought diesel fuel needed a an oily rag and a leaf blower to ignite, but I showed you a video of diesel being ignited with a wooden match.

You thought that the open structure of the garage should have cleared away all the smoke, but didn't realize that it would also help feed oxygen to the fire.

The list could stretch on and on...

 

[catsmate]

A modern car's chassis is made of carbon steel. I understand that the reasoning behind this is that if one is in a crash, the exterior crumbles quickly, thus lessening the impact to the occupants but probably does mean it is less fire resistant. An EV car's chassis is made of carbon fibre or alloys:

Bollocks.
And on average a modern saloon contains around 180kg of plastic. Plenty of fuel here.

Does it make the spread of a fire from one car to another without a burning escaped fluid thread connecting them all more likely? I don't know.

Just one of the vast number of things you don't know.........