Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire part II

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Vixen said:
Haha. The only way the police or fire brigade can identify the vehicle for sure is via its VIN.


You do know that number plate cloning and faked number plates are relatively common in the criminal world.? The anti-ULEZ guys have been encouraging people to do this recently.

So if an entire public use building burns down within three-quarters of an hour and you are the Old Bill do you really take a car number plate at face value without further enquiry? Where is your famous suspicion of a criminal offence and need to verify the correct vehicle number zero?
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:rolleyes:

Except the vehicle, a diesel Range Rover, has been identified as has it's owner.....
:rolleyes:

And over her it's a Chassis Number, adhering to ISO 3779.
 
Thermal said:
And NYC's Twin Towers were designed to be hit by planes and stand. The best engineered designs sometimes fail due to a variety of field factors.
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I am sure that may be true but for now we have to await the Fire Report into the Luton car park fire.

I am not sure why there is a need for helpless acceptance of unconfirmed information. This is how countries like Iran, Russia and China manage to instill complete censorship on its citizens; the fear of asking questions and showing natural curiosity.
 
Vixen said:
People have identified the vehicle varyingly as a Range Rover Evoque or even a Tesla. Why is it more important that it is a Range Rover Sport, 2014, when the Fire Brigade and police have not given you this information? Why the need to believe some random person on Twitter with 480 followers.

You can treat it as a conspiracy theory if you like, but I for one shall continue to treat it as current affairs. I do not accept your claim that the case is closed.
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As I said quite clearly, it's not closed. But that doesn't mean the door is wide open for kooky conspiracy theories. So far, to the best of our knowledge, a diesel Rover caught fire and started the chain reaction that turned Burny Car into Collapsy Car Park. We have no reason at all to entertain thoughts of covert clandestine conspiracies against electric vehicles or shady backyard tinkerers or Lizard People Mechanics or wherever the **** we are off to now.
 
Vixen said:
I refer you to Foster Zygote's numerous videos of burning diesel-only vehicles.
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Petrol-fuelled cars also emit black smoke when they burn. Plastics, rubber, fabric ...
 
Vixen said:
Which makes me wonder, is the driver of this car some kind of well known person (a two-digit number plate showing at the rear ['MH?']) so that's why the press are being shall we say, discreet. Money talks. Slap on bail conditions and that shuts down gossip for at least six months until the fire report and even then it'll not focus on Car Zero.
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Or it is a normal UK plate?

My car's plate is AB 14 XYZ (obvs letters are changed), but that has been the standard pattern for many a long year, the "14" referring to the car being registered in early 2014.
 
Vixen said:
News update: LBC Radio have been chatting to members of the fire brigade union, who claim the building should have been able to withstand a fire for at least 15 minutes but despite their arriving within eight minutes, they could not contain it.
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What does "withstand" mean in this context? I know several structures that can "withstand" fires indefinitely: the ones used to train firefighters in which fires are lit over and over again. The factors contributing to containing a structure fire vary widely by the type of fire and the architecture of the structure. The factors contributing to fire spread also vary greatly, but are generally dominated by the combustible load distribution. By "withstand," we engineers generally mean the structure remains standing. Egress routes may be cut off. Services such as electricity and communication may fail. The structure may be entirely engulfed in flames. But as long as it doesn't collapse, it has "withstood" the fire.

The text in question seems to have been written by the journalist and is not attributed as a quote to any of the consulted experts. As such it may be conflating two dissimilar ideas: structural endurance and rescue accessibility. When are you going to stop trusting journalists to mangle facts for you?
 
Vixen;14202802[HILITE said:
]How strange then, that in Finland you can look up a car number plate and discover not only who owns it but also the car's insurers, and also have access to their address[/HILITE], yet its privacy laws, like Germany's are very strict compared to the UK. People convicted of crimes are only ever named by the press in exceptional circumstances. In England you only have to step outside your front door and the press won't hesitate to name and shame you if it thinks you left a restaurant without paying your bill. Of course, in the UK, it is only the plebs that get named and their financial affairs publicised (but that's for another thread).

Which makes me wonder, is the driver of this car some kind of well known person (a two-digit number plate showing at the rear ['MH?']) so that's why the press are being shall we say, discreet. Money talks. Slap on bail conditions and that shuts down gossip for at least six months until the fire report and even then it'll not focus on Car Zero.
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How curious, given that Traficom states that you can access:
.....vehicle make and model, date of commissioning, date of inspection and the next inspection date, insurance details, and the name, address and city of the owner and/or holder.
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Vixen said:
Haha. The only way the police or fire brigade can identify the vehicle for sure is via its VIN.


You do know that number plate cloning and faked number plates are relatively common in the criminal world.? The anti-ULEZ guys have been encouraging people to do this recently.

So if an entire public use building burns down within three-quarters of an hour and you are the Old Bill do you really take a car number plate at face value without further enquiry? Where is your famous suspicion of a criminal offence and need to verify the correct vehicle number zero?
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Do you listen to yourself? Are you seriously proposing that the only way the police and fire service could work out if the car they have in front of them, to which they have complete access, is diesel powered is by looking it up via the number plate or VIN?

:dl:
 
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Vixen said:
Which makes me wonder, is the driver of this car some kind of well known person (a two-digit number plate showing at the rear ['MH?']) so that's why the press are being shall we say, discreet. Money talks. Slap on bail conditions and that shuts down gossip for at least six months until the fire report and even then it'll not focus on Car Zero.
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???

Do you mean MH plus 2 digits, for example MH69?
 
Vixen said:
Some people like tinkering with cars. Co-part do good business auctioning salvaged cars. I was shocked to see my written-off car in July already snapped up by some eager enthusiast.
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Indeed they do. I have a little 30 year old sports car and the related owners forums have entire sections devoted to modifications to boost the original engine or to replace the original 4 cylinder with a 6 or 8 cylinder engine or a rotary engine or an EV drivetrain or in a few cases to fit a smaller and very frugal engine. And another entire section devoted to fitting this 1990s car's drivetrain into trackday kit cars or retro-cool older cars.

I also sometimes read build project threads about entirely unrelated models of car too, yet I have never ever seen anyone convert any model of car into a diesel hybrid.

The thing you discover is that, even if you do most of the work yourself, doing it right gets really expensive. So people do not buy a hobby car to modify it into another available model of the same car which they could just have bought ready-made anyway.

TL;DR The reason you can't find an example of anyone converting a diesel Range Rover into the diesel hybrid version is because nobody has done that because it's pointless.
 
Vixen said:
All in your mind. Imagine you are a senior detective. A public building - an airport car park which is very near the airport lounge - burns to the ground surprisingly rapidly (as compared to similar historical fires). A member of public might shrug and say, it must have been accidental. Car fires happen all the time. Your job is not to shrug. You will have been trained to have a suspicious mind. You'll consider - it being an airport - an act of would-be terrorism (explosives went off too soon?)? a bunch of bored kids playing with matches who thought it would be a laugh? an anti-social arsonist (pyromania is a recognised personality disorder)? You can't just take it for granted it was 'just an accident being a vehicle fault' because the awfully nice driver has assured you so. To be worth your pay grade you would want to get that car in for forensic examination and that would involve getting its VIN. This cannot be done whilst the building is still burning and in time for the one and only press release by the Fire Officer.
There is no conspiracy theory other than those in your own mind.
ETA: The Prime Minister's wife certainly managed to get her hands on Covid money and one of her educational outlets successfully tendered, not to mention getting non-dom taxed so she didn't actually pay tax that her husband then was supposed to collect. All above board but don't claim it is not possible!
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So, very very true.
 
Vixen said:
I am sure that may be true but for now we have to await the Fire Report into the Luton car park fire.

I am not sure why there is a need for helpless acceptance of unconfirmed information. This is how countries like Iran, Russia and China manage to instill complete censorship on its citizens; the fear of asking questions and showing natural curiosity.
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There is a gaping, chasm-like maw between asking questions and spinning off to the Lunatic Fringe of vast political conspiracies and duel fuel backyard Lizard People tinkerers.

It was a big fire. OK. Unless you see some huge factor that indicates otherwise, what we know now pretty much explains things without pissing off Bobby Occam and latching on to a (ahem) boatload of assumptions, so...
 
zooterkin said:
Do you listen to yourself? Are you seriously proposing that the only way the police and fire service could work out if the car they have in front of them, to which they have complete access, is diesel powered is by looking it up via the number plate or VIN?

:dl:
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Indeed. I would have expected that even a badly damaged engine could be identified as EV, HEV, ICE, fairly easily.
 
Vixen said:
Well, he wanted me to send him the defa lead and second key, so maybe he is going to pay to fix it or fix it himself.
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For a car less than 20-ish years old, the keys have value because they can be sold as a set of keys, locks, immobiliser and engine management computer. The key has a transponder chip which identifies itself to the immobiliser which lets the ECU start the car. If any part fails, the cheapest repair can be to replace the whole lot.
 
Vixen said:
No, you are the one who decided it was a conspiracy.
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Your OP described a conspiracy theory (highlighted below), whether you recognise it as such or not. You appeared to be simply reporting it, but now you seem to believe it.

Vixen said:
Luton Airport Car Park No.2 was destroyed a few days ago when a Range Rover suddenly caught fire as it was driving in. Miraculously the driver managed to escape despite the rapid spread of the fire across the floors and ceiling up to the next level. Thankfully only five people were injured, mostly with smoke inhalation.


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67077996

Whilst the police confirm the vehicle in question was a diesel car, there has been much speculation and arguing on social media that the car ‘must have been an EV or Hybrid’ as ‘only a lithium battery would explode like that’.

Someone else has identified the car from its number plates as being a diesel 2014 Land Rover sports model. The issue is that people do not believe that diesel is particularly combustible. Plus the flames seem to spread out from underneath the passenger side ‘indicating an EV battery issue’.
Some seem to believe that police are playing down the EV angle because they do not want to ruin the EV-car market.
For example:

“I can remember car parks exploding and bursting into flames long before electric vehicles were invented…NOT #LutonAirport” https://x.com/Iromg/status/1712093115148882169?s=20
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I just read this entire 40+ page thread and I wish I hadn't. I did learn the following however, apparently I'm dumb because I think that I'm melting steel when I do some welding at work.

Vixen said:
No dumber than someone who thinks applying a welding tool to solid steel will melt it.
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You can melt steel within seconds with any cheap welding machine. If you're not melting steel with your "welding tool" then you're not welding steel.
 
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