Luton Airport Car Park Fire

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Vixen said:
You might note that the Fire Brigade has actually told us very little. There is little that could be called 'a lie' at a later date.
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What the **** has that to do with the claimed "distraction" of the arrest? Mind, I'm not conceding your point. I'm merely pointing out that we were talking about whether an arrest could possibly be useful to Range Rover, given that the fire brigade has said that the fire started due to vehicle fault and that it is commonly believed that the initial vehicle was a Range Rover.

The arrest is the lamest distraction one can imagine. If they wanted to shift attention away from the Range Rover, they would not have announced that the fire appeared to be caused by vehicle fault.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Your POV is unreasonable. The authorities have identified the vehicle. According to the registration It wasn't a hybrid, and it wasn't legally modified. That leaves incorrect registration details or an illegal modification, both of which are extremely unlikely. The only other possible reason for not believing the official account is that they are deliberately covering up the real facts, which is even less likely.

So you are holding on to a POV that is completely contrary to all the evidence. What's next, "We can't rule out that the Moon is actually made of green cheese."?

Eventually the forensic report will be released. I'm betting it will specifically point out that the fire started in an unmodified diesel vehicle. I also predict that a major cause of the severity of the blaze will be identified as fuel from melted petrol tanks running between vehicles, just as it was in the 2017 King's Dock report. If EVs are mentioned at all I would not be surprised if they were found to have spread the fire less than petrol and diesel vehicles.

But of course even that would not be sufficient proof for you. The report could be faked. Someone could have hijacked the internet and TV stations to deliver it. Everyone in the whole world but you could be in on the deception. Or perhaps you are actually in the Matrix. At what point do you decide to rule out the improbable?
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Actually, they haven't identified the vehicle as far as the brand is concerned but haven't denied it was a Range Rover as pictured by a nearby witness and presumed CCTV image, either.

The Liverpool car park fire was deemed to have been caused by a running burning fuel line between initially a couple of rows of cars and then spreading upwards after two hours after which it was declared uncontrollable. In the interim, this burning fuel, according to the Fire Report into this fire, had spread to lower floors via the drainage system, which unfortunately was not able to withstand the high temperature of it.

Looking at the time line of the Luton Fire:

10 October 2023

20:47 first call to the emergency services to report the fire Level 3.

20:57 Fire brigade arrival within 'ten minutes'

21:00 just after - eye witness sees car 'flame throw' on open air top deck Level 4. He says cars alighting every few minutes thereafter with bangs and pops.

21:38: Fire Brigade call it a 'Major Incident', four fire fighters and one airport worker rushed to hospital with smoke inhalation problems. Fire fighting from outside the building with 100 firemen from surrounding districts and London Fire Brigade.

23:32 a time stamped video shows a vehicle plunging through the ceiling to the floor below.

11 Oct 2023

00:22 Fire brigade says it is no longer a major incident.

09:30 Fire now quenched to smouldering level.

Time to reach uncontrollable level: 51 minutes, half that of the Liverpool fire which the Fire Brigade said was one of the worst they had ever seen.

A Romanian eye witness said she saw the burning vehicle - the driver had already left - and she and her companion went to a lower floor to get a fire extinguisher because two nearby the vehicle were already empty.

She told a press reporter at the scene that they left when 'the fuel tank exploded'.

This must have been before 21:00-ish whilst still relatively escapable without injury. This is because an eye witness said he saw cars catching fire on the roof just after 21:00.

So, for a diesel fuel tank to 'explode' (or deflagrate, rather), the vapour int he tank has to reach circa 100

Diesel is a relatively stable product at temperatures below 100 degrees. Above that, diesel will begin to vaporize. And the hotter the temperature, the faster it will vaporize. So in a scenario where there's a nearby fire providing lots of heat, there's the potential for a lot of vapors.

Just like with gasoline, it's the diesel vapors that are explosive. Diesel has a pretty wide explosive range of 1–10 percent. Less than 1 percent diesel vapors in the air or more than 10 percent and nothing happens. But inside that range, if you expose it to fire, kaboom.
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But where would that nearby heat have come from in the first place in Vehicle Zero? Assuming the fuel tank is not leaking - remember, it is the fuel tank exploding according to the Romanian lady - a piece of shrapnel piercing the tank, say from a lithium-ion battery, that is already aflame at a high temperature could have been the catalyst to cause this fire ball. If it was an electrical fire from the engine area (under the bonnet/hood) how did it reach the fuel tank at the back to cause it to appear to explode?
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Or, the tank could fail from overpressure from the vapors. That would send a cloud of atomized diesel flying in all directions. If that fuel hits a source of ignition, it would rapidly catch fire and create a fireball, but would not technically be an “explosion.”
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Brian Trotta 'firefighter'

For the diesel tank to self-ignite it needs to have reached its ignition point temperature. (This is a different scenario from a leak fuel line.)

Of course, it is possible there was more than one fault with the vehicle but for the fuel tank to 'explode' or rather, burst into flame within less than ten minutes of the reported alarm call, something must have either penetrated the tank, which would have to be shrapnel of high velocity to pierce it and then trigger the vapours inside the tank; or its temperature must have been brought up to a very high temperature very rapidly for it to be able to combust and cause the tank to melt away completely in a fireball.

Within ten minutes of the first call, the fire had spread to a car on the roof, or to the roof setting off some cars or one car.

Whilst it may be useful to use the Liverpool Fire as a precedent for this one, I cannot see that it is similar other than that it was an intense fire, as you'd expect when a whole bunch of cars parked together all catch fire, if what the eye witness saw was an accurate depiction. And of course, we know lithium-ion fires are particularly toxic to inhale. A burning fuel line leak certainly would not look the same as a fuel tank exploding.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Indeed, which I why I propose a more intriguing possibility:-

Big Oil is trying to pin all car fires on EVs because they are hurting sales of petrol and diesel. To help with this they are paying an army of internet trolls to parrot one or more of the following talking points:-

- 'Evidence' shows It was an EV or hybrid (including 'facts' like 'diesel is very hard to ignite and doesn't burn like that', and 'the fire started exactly where the lithium battery is in this vehicle')..

- Even if it wasn't, EVs caused the fire to spread faster and be impossible to put out.

- The authorities are covering it up because they are in the pockets of Big Electric and Big Renewables.

- The government is forcing us to buy EVs as part of some nefarious plan to take way our freedoms.

- Global warming is a hoax and CO2 is good for you.

As 'evidence' for this I present the current thread.
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Not Big Oil, although various ministers have contacts with Shell and fracking companies. The UK government have complex plans to bring about Net Zero, albeit put back a few years. However, anything that calls into question the safety or costs of implementing the phasing out of fossil fuel-powered would certainly be a big concerned. No way would the government allow one incident, which might have zero to do with safety per se but everything to do with a faulty model or driver error allow such a possibility to be expressed in the national media. Plus the £4bn investment by Tata owners of JLR in the UK to build a million square foot car battery factory creating jobs in that region; it would be a massive spanner in the works were there to be a moral panic about lithium-ion car batteries.
 
Disbelief said:
A hybrid can be ruled out, since the fire brigade put out a statement that it was a diesel. Also, please don't try and tell me about cars, I have worked in the industry for 27+ years.
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With your 27+ years of expertise in the motor industry, what in your view would cause a fire on one level of a car park to have spread to the next level within, let's say fifteen minutes? The initial car is a diesel-only. You know the timing because the driver has only just left the vehicle and it has been reported.

Talk us through it.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Or, as I have come across a lot in my job, people swapping their diesel for LPG or biodiesel. I work in a job where people making their diesel into a hybrid would be a huge thing because it would stop them paying charges, but I've never seen it happen. Not once.
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Is it 'Rev' as in 'Rrrrrrrevvvvverend'...?
 
Anytime I've been faced with a difficult problem, I've thrown a Molotov cocktail at it, and Boom, I had a different problem.
 
Mojo said:
Doesn't answer the question. Why would the police be concerned about the make of the car being named by the fire brigade?
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Police won't care. It'll be Prime Minster Rishi Sunak and his wife not wanting anything to besmirch the Tata brand. Imagine if the Range Rover had a dud lithium battery, albeit a mild hybrid, just as they are champing at the bit to build a factory of the things...? Of course, Rish! wouldn't lie. It'd just be an 'inadvertent' oversight that he forgot to state his wife's interests. Whoops. He did it again. Silly him.
 
phiwum said:
Even the lawyers are ruled by the Simple English folk. It's a tough job for them.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
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Lawyers deal in binding contracts and get-out clauses. Range Rover lawyers will be working overtime to get-out of this. 'The Fire Brigade never said it was a Range Rover what done it,' will be their line.

It'll be pinned on the driver.
 
Mojo said:
What sort of "driver error" would lead to a car catching fire?
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"It was getting a bit chilly and while I fully intended to to turn on the car's heater I inadvertently lit a large campfire in the passenger footwell instead. Fortunately I noticed my error while make my second or third s'more and was able to hastily exit the vehicle."
 
Vixen said:
Don't be silly. When is the last time the police told you anything.
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What it the **** is that supposed to mean?

Just the other day, the police told me to put my hands on the car and spread my legs, for what it's worth.
 
Thermal said:
For my own sanity, I have not followed much of the thread, so this was likely discussed, but:

Why throw shade on EVs? They are clean, and the newish technology should be appealing in that it opens the doors wide for whole new manufacturing paradigms, that it's critics would presumably be lapping up for the opportunity to have a relatively low competition marketplace.
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If as is feared they are a fire hazard when they do catch fire, albeit less frequently than petrol or diesel or even hybrids then it does become a political issue. People don't care about the cobalt mining by young children in third world countries but if any potential hazard is nearer to home then the government may be forced to relook at safety standards in public places.

You can be all for Net Zero and clean air whilst also being a supporter of safety standards. They are not mutually exclusive.
 
Vixen said:
Lawyers deal in binding contracts and get-out clauses. Range Rover lawyers will be working overtime to get-out of this. 'The Fire Brigade never said it was a Range Rover what done it,' will be their line.

It'll be pinned on the driver.
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Okay, let's see if that's the case. If the final report states explicitly that the make is Range Rover and that the cause is vehicle, not driver, fault, then you're simply and plainly wrong.

It also seems to me that you're simply and plainly wrong if the final report says that initial vehicle had a strictly internal combustion engine, not hybrid.

You would also be plainly wrong if the chief happens to mention the make or type of engine in a press conference without the usual caveats. (Of course, you're already evidently wrong because the official web page says it was a diesel without caveats, but that's one of those errors you simply won't admit and there's no point discussing it.)

You agree with the above assessments? If so, we should know whether and to what extent you have been wrong in a matter of some months.
 
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