Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire part II

[MarkCorrigan]

Vixen why are you ignoring my question?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Please concentrate on the specific news topic and not try to associate it with 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff.

Stop making stupid claims that a big fire could not have been caused by a smaller fire and I'll stop taking the piss out of your doing so. Deal?

 

[JayUtah]

Nothing to do with a conspiracy theory. The car park fire was an event that happened. It is current news. If you think people being interested...

What does the purported general interest in an event have to do with you continually insinuating that you are competent to question the methods and findings of experienced and well-informed investigators? As usual, you have used a current event as an excuse to propose a conspiracy.

 

[Foster Zygote]

So we've been told it was probably an electric fire in a diesel car only which spread to others.

Which is a perfectly mundane explanation for the fire.

The important details of HOW this could happen and why the fire brigade who were there quite promptly were unable to contain what should have been an every day fire.

Interpreting your sentence fragment, it's already been explained to you that there is nothing remotely suspicious about being unable to give an exact reason for the initial ignition of the fire when the resulting conflagration causes such destruction. It would actually be more suspicious if they'd claimed it was worn insulation on a battery cable or a mechanical failure in the alternator.

And you have yet to establish that the fire service was there as quickly as you say they were. Even the statement in question contains the following:

The developing fire spread to other components, and whilst the owner of the vehicle attempted to fight the fire, the vehicle became overrun with flames and spread to other parked vehicles.
The vehicle involved was diesel-powered – it was not a mild hybrid, plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle.

When the fire service arrived on the night, crews were faced with a rapidly escalating fire and shortly after, declared a major incident.

By the time firefighters arrived, the fire had already spread to other vehicles.

There were eventually 100 firefighters from several regions, including the London Fire Brigade itself and they couldn't quell it for several hours...

Consistent with a fire involving hundreds of vehicles, in close proximity, which was already well under way by time firefighters arrived.

...five firefighters, who are trained in self-safety ended up in hospital suffering from noxious fumes, which their fire safety equipment and procedures didn't seem to anticipate.

Firefighters being treated for smoke inhalation is fairly common. You make it sound as though they were brought into the hospital incapacitated, even near death. Were they? Sending anyone exposed to smoke and fumes to be checked out medically is a standard safety practice.

And again, fumes from Li-ion battery fires aren't uniquely toxic. The fumes from burning petroleum products, rubber, plastic, paint, upholstery etcetera are highly toxic, and having ~5% of the responding firefighters checked out for smoke inhalation after such a large fire is not the least bit unusual.

Thinking that Li-ion batteries burn like that all on their own, that they can melt through concrete and annihilate a large, multi-story parking garage with their own stored energy alone, is like thinking that microwave ovens emit gamma rays.

 

[zooterkin]

Please concentrate on the specific news topic and not try to associate it with 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff.

How about you tell us what you think happened?

 

[Andy_Ross]

No, sorry. If you drop a lighted cigarette end under a parked car, it should not go up in flames with such intensity the entire car park is ablaze in less than X hours (need to look up the specific time). Just because a car is an EV that doesn't mean it will suffer a thermal runaway if a car nearby has a fire in its engine bay, especially if the fire brigade has arrived promptly.

Li-on batteries burn because of instability within the cells. The ensuing fire feeds on the oxygen that is generated. And what does oxygen do...? Tell me. So do you see why an intensity of heat that was high enough to melt the concrete floor and bend the steel rebars has to be consistent with the type of fire involved?

Is that how the fire started? a dropped cigarette under a car?

Who has said that any concrete melted?

What temperature is needed for steel to become soft enough to bend as it did in this fire?

Where did you get that information?

 

[JayUtah]

Interpreting your sentence fragment, it's already been explained to you that there is nothing remotely suspicious about being unable to give an exact reason for the initial ignition of the fire when the resulting conflagration causes such destruction.

Correct, and why even conclusions about specific causal chains are always and ever only reported as "most probable cause." As one contributor astutely reckoned, until we've perfect time machines, that is the best we'll ever get. That does not mean it is merely a "guess." The language merely acknowledges the epistemological reality of any such investigation. The actual findings are often strong enough to support a finding of fact in court.

Firefighters being treated for smoke inhalation is fairly common. You make it sound as though they were brought into the hospital incapacitated, even near death. Were they? Sending anyone exposed to smoke and fumes to be checked out medically is a standard safety practice.

In my case it's required by our worker compensation underwriter, no matter how allegedly minor the exposure or negligible the symptoms. Competent medical authority must assess the apparent degree of injury following certain exposure scenarios, even if the degree of injury is assessed to be zero. The intensity of the exposure event cannot be inferred from the mere fact that involved people were sent to hospical for evaluation.

Thinking that Li-ion batteries burn like that all on their own, that they can melt through concrete and annihilate a large, multi-story parking garage with their own stored energy alone, is like thinking that microwave ovens emit gamma rays.

It's purely magical thinking. Hydrocarbon fuels have roughly two orders of magnitude greater specific energy than lithium ion battery cells.

 

[malbui]

Back in the day it was traditional for the young people of the city of Strasbourg to celebrate New Year’s Eve by setting fire to as many cars as they could find parked in the open. Or so we thought. Maybe the often fought-over region of Alsace was actually home to large fleets of electric cars long before they were on the market elsewhere, and all those respectable young citizens were unfairly maligned.

 

[catsmate]

<gibber snip>

Nothing has been reported except the bare minimum which shows you the facts are being tightly controlled by government via the lawyers.

Childish, conspiratorial nonsense.

With the Liverpool fire, newspapers reported from day one what vehicle it was.

So?

 

[catsmate]

Oh for goodness sake. The car park did not burn down because of a simple diesel fire.

Oh look you're spewing straw again.

I didn't claim that. I said "The vehicle that started the car park fire has been determined to be a diesel fuelled one". Which is a fact.

Why must you compulsively lie?

 

[catsmate]

Vixen's quote about the Silly Season is from an article published 13 July 1861. Anyone want to bet against there having been a few changes in the media since then?

I hear these newfangled 'telegraphs' might catch on.....

 

[catsmate]

No, it was because of a huge number of diesel, petrol, plastic, rubber and, yes, even EV car battery fires all burning at the same time in the same place.

Exactly. We've already discussed this, at length. I provides energy estimates, which Vixen (of course) ignored in favour of gibbering about conspiracies and electric vehicles.

The fire started in a diesel vehicle, we even know the type, and spread probably because of liquid fuel carrying the flames.

 

[catsmate]

See SCIENCE DIRECT here.

Sigh another OA 'pay to print' "journal".

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Well, your view is off a bit. Calculating space required on supermarket shelves - whatever exactly you mean by that - is not SCIENCE.

See SCIENCE DIRECT here.

That article says the allocation of supermarket shelf space could be done more optimally by employing operations research, but explicitly says current practice is generally not so scientific:

In current retail practice, however, shelf planning is often based on planner’s experience, gut feeling and manual trial-and-error approaches with limited IT support

As for what that tells us about the Luton Airport Car Park Fire, it says only that a person who has spent months failing to understand simple English sentences confirming the fire began in a diesel vehicle is such an unreliable source that she has cited an article disproving her contention that accountants use scientific methods when calculating shelf space in supermarkets.

 

[JayUtah]

Sigh another OA 'pay to print' "journal".

Indeed, the provision for publication is not equivalent to accreditation of the field or credentialling of its practitioners. While it's admirable that people have a forum for publishing their research, the existence of a journal does not establish something as a science. However :—

That article says the allocation of supermarket shelf space could be done more optimally by employing operations research, but explicitly says current practice is generally not so scientific:

The scientific method can be applied to literally any question where (a) an effect can be measurably observed according to a deduced property, (b) a hypothesis can be drawn to purport a cause for the effect, (c) an observable consequent property of the purported cause can be reliably deduced, and (d) a method can be found to reliably vary and control the properties, while observing them, in a way that tests the causal claim of the hypothesis. This could apply to a large number of questions in many pursuits. That does not make those pursuits science, no matter how generously we want to define science as anything to which the scientific method can be applied.

Generally anyone wishing to have reliable, evidence-based answers will apply whatever principles of scientific inquiry are appropriate to a determination of those answers. That does not immediately make that person a scientist.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

I hear these newfangled 'telegraphs' might catch on.....

Only so long as we have sufficient ragamuffins who can be prevailed upon to run the missives from the Postal Offices to their final destination on promise of a shiney sixpence. Good thing the little rascals can't read eh, or what knows what mischief they might get up to with the information contained there in!

 

[Vixen]

I see the misconstrued 'fuel lines' have made another appearance.

And as already mentioned, the flip-flop from 'why have they changed their statement?' to 'why have they nothing new to say?' is pretty funny.

For an explanation please see the Liverpool ECHO Fire Report in which it was identified that:

Observations and recommendations
1. Running fuel fires will lead to fire spread in car parks. Designers should
consider the likelihood of running fuel fires, when designing floor layouts and
ramping systems that incorporate vehicle parking.

This was in 2018. One would have thought Luton Airport Car Park would take measures to mitigate against this recognised risk.

2.4 Running fuel fires
Running fuel fires were witnessed by BA crews and this undoubtedly led to fire spread
through the drainage system, down ramps and along the rib slab floor. This was also
highlighted in the BRE experiments conducted between 2006 and 2009:
 “Running fuel fires due to failure of plastic fuel tanks in early stages of vehicle
fires can be expected. It is estimated 85% of European vehicles are thought to
have plastic fuel tanks.” (BRE Fire Spread in Car Parks BD2552 p.12).
 For two minutes, the tank, fixed as on the vehicle, must be exposed to flame.
There must be no leakage of fuel from the tank” (The United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe (UNECE) Regulation 34, Annex 5, paragraph 5.1).
Areas of the roadways within the car park, sited away from any parked vehicles,
appear to have suffered spalling.

According to BRE experiments, that in such a situation it would take roughly twenty minutes for cars parked next to each other to ignite from such a line.

But the Luton vehicle was not parked in such a bay and presumably the risk of such a spread pf fire was now minimized or prevented, thanks to the Liverpool recommendations.

 

[Vixen]

What do you think happened, then?

Uncontrollable lithium-ion fire, obvs.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Uncontrollable lithium-ion fire, obvs.

Based on what?

 

[theprestige]

For an explanation please see the Liverpool ECHO Fire Report in which it was identified that:



This was in 2018. One would have thought Luton Airport Car Park would take measures to mitigate against this recognised risk.

What measures would you recommend? There's only so much you can do, to park a large number of cars in an accessible way.