Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire IV

[zooterkin]

I have read the report and I appreciate Beds F&R Service revealing the make, model and year of the vehicle, thanks to public pressure.

I was absolutely right that all the so-called updates everybody kept insisting was new information was pure PR, based on what was announced on Day One, as I said. And note, the Home Office was appraised from get-go.

So all those trying to force me into admitting the press releases were all new updates, were wrong.

It also confirms that the Range Rover Sport (and there was a 2014 version that did have a lithium ion battery, although I accept this one did not) on arriving at the car park was emitting white smoke from under its bonnet. So the smoke was light-coloured and not an error of the colour spectrum settings on one's laptop.

I should have liked to have seen a recommendation that in future, such an observation - of smoke emanating from a car bonnet - in any arriving vehicle would be flagged and refused entry.

I'd also have appreciated a detailed explanation of how the flames developed so rapidly but I am sure experts on youtube will be along shortly.

Whilst the report is immaculately well-written, I thought the Merseyside Fire Brigade Report of 2018 was more comprehensive and better presented.

I was quite shocked that none of the Liverpool Fire Report recommendations had been taken on board, the Fire Services seemed quite ill prepared for such a major incident, with no logistics manager with a central list of available personnel and up to date contact information. Also, the location of the water tanks were hidden away in the Airport's risk schedule, kept separately from LLA, the car park authority, so not discovered until after the Fire Brigade had located an alternative source of water, at the bottom of a hill. A car drove over the hose, causing it to break at one point.

An airport worker decided he was going to fetch his car one hour into the fire and he was let through but then had to be rescued (really!). It seems people are still not aware of fire safety procedures. Only four people rang 999, emergency services, that was a theme also common to Liverpool.

Biggest eyebrow raiser was the team of arriving firefighters who scoffed all of the food on their arrival, leaving those coming off their four-hour shift with nothing eat, except a van was sent to fetch some more food. It all seemed quite chaotic with the communications radio channels all on one frequency meaning the senior commanders had to use a second device to communicate with each other given the sheer amount of calls being exchanged.

What a very roundabout way of saying, "I was wrong".

 

[Disbelief]

I have read the report and I appreciate Beds F&R Service revealing the make, model and year of the vehicle, thanks to public pressure.

I was absolutely right that all the so-called updates everybody kept insisting was new information was pure PR, based on what was announced on Day One, as I said. And note, the Home Office was appraised from get-go.



So all those trying to force me into admitting the press releases were all new updates, were wrong.

It also confirms that the Range Rover Sport (and there was a 2014 version that did have a lithium ion battery, although I accept this one did not) on arriving at the car park was emitting white smoke from under its bonnet. So the smoke was light-coloured and not an error of the colour spectrum settings on one's laptop.

I should have liked to have seen a recommendation that in future, such an observation - of smoke emanating from a car bonnet - in any arriving vehicle would be flagged and refused entry.

I'd also have appreciated a detailed explanation of how the flames developed so rapidly but I am sure experts on youtube will be along shortly.

Whilst the report is immaculately well-written, I thought the Merseyside Fire Brigade Report of 2018 was more comprehensive and better presented.

I was quite shocked that none of the Liverpool Fire Report recommendations had been taken on board, the Fire Services seemed quite ill prepared for such a major incident, with no logistics manager with a central list of available personnel and up to date contact information. Also, the location of the water tanks were hidden away in the Airport's risk schedule, kept separately from LLA, the car park authority, so not discovered until after the Fire Brigade had located an alternative source of water, at the bottom of a hill. A car drove over the hose, causing it to break at one point.

An airport worker decided he was going to fetch his car one hour into the fire and he was let through but then had to be rescued (really!). It seems people are still not aware of fire safety procedures. Only four people rang 999, emergency services, that was a theme also common to Liverpool.

Biggest eyebrow raiser was the team of arriving firefighters who scoffed all of the food on their arrival, leaving those coming off their four-hour shift with nothing eat, except a van was sent to fetch some more food. It all seemed quite chaotic with the communications radio channels all on one frequency meaning the senior commanders had to use a second device to communicate with each other given the sheer amount of calls being exchanged.

What a bizarre interpretation. It would have been much easier to admit that you were wrong about it being an EV fire.

 

[Vixen]

What a bizarre interpretation. It would have been much easier to admit that you were wrong about it being an EV fire.

I still think it looked like a lithium fire but I accept that despite confirming the smoke was white, it was diesel-only. But I'd still like to understand why it manifested as it did and why the blaze became so completely uncontrollable within minutes, when normally. a quick squirt of fire hydrant under the bonnet should have done the trick, or at least within twenty minutes of the time the Fire Brigade arrived.

However, whilst this is an interesting topic for me, I get that there are people here who are only here to 'call out' and mock.

It's a shame really that there cannot be a serious discussion.

 

[zooterkin]

I still think it looked like a lithium fire but I accept that despite confirming the smoke was white, it was diesel-only. But I'd still like to understand why it manifested as it did and why the blaze became so completely uncontrollable within minutes, when normally. a quick squirt of fire hydrant under the bonnet should have done the trick, or at least within twenty minutes of the time the Fire Brigade arrived.

However, whilst this is an interesting topic for me, I get that there are people here who are only here to 'call out' and mock.

It's a shame really that there cannot be a serious discussion.

My supplies are running low, but I seem to have one left.

 

[Steve]

I have read the report and I appreciate Beds F&R Service revealing the make, model and year of the vehicle, thanks to public pressure.

I was absolutely right that all the so-called updates everybody kept insisting was new information was pure PR, based on what was announced on Day One, as I said. And note, the Home Office was appraised from get-go.



So all those trying to force me into admitting the press releases were all new updates, were wrong.

It also confirms that the Range Rover Sport (and there was a 2014 version that did have a lithium ion battery, although I accept this one did not) on arriving at the car park was emitting white smoke from under its bonnet. So the smoke was light-coloured and not an error of the colour spectrum settings on one's laptop.

I should have liked to have seen a recommendation that in future, such an observation - of smoke emanating from a car bonnet - in any arriving vehicle would be flagged and refused entry.

I'd also have appreciated a detailed explanation of how the flames developed so rapidly but I am sure experts on youtube will be along shortly.

Whilst the report is immaculately well-written, I thought the Merseyside Fire Brigade Report of 2018 was more comprehensive and better presented.

I was quite shocked that none of the Liverpool Fire Report recommendations had been taken on board, the Fire Services seemed quite ill prepared for such a major incident, with no logistics manager with a central list of available personnel and up to date contact information. Also, the location of the water tanks were hidden away in the Airport's risk schedule, kept separately from LLA, the car park authority, so not discovered until after the Fire Brigade had located an alternative source of water, at the bottom of a hill. A car drove over the hose, causing it to break at one point.

An airport worker decided he was going to fetch his car one hour into the fire and he was let through but then had to be rescued (really!). It seems people are still not aware of fire safety procedures. Only four people rang 999, emergency services, that was a theme also common to Liverpool.

Biggest eyebrow raiser was the team of arriving firefighters who scoffed all of the food on their arrival, leaving those coming off their four-hour shift with nothing eat, except a van was sent to fetch some more food. It all seemed quite chaotic with the communications radio channels all on one frequency meaning the senior commanders had to use a second device to communicate with each other given the sheer amount of calls being exchanged.

Oh my!

 

[JayUtah]

I have read the report and I appreciate Beds F&R Service revealing the make, model and year of the vehicle, thanks to public pressure.

No evidence that this was their reason. In fact, you argued strenuously that such reporting was expected, and that its absence would be suspicious. It can't be tautologically suspicious.

I was absolutely right that all the so-called updates everybody kept insisting was new information was pure PR, based on what was announced on Day One, as I said.

No. The report makes plain that all communications were to be considered authoritative.

And note, the Home Office was appraised from get-go.

As seems appropriate, and which was never disputed. However, you suggest that this was so that powerful people could control the investigation to protect their interest. There is no evidence of such a motive.

So all those trying to force me into admitting the press releases were all new updates, were wrong.

Because you say so? That new information was presented in each release is an objectively observable fact. That each release was expected to be taken as an authoritative statement is implied in the report. Your insistence that the reports were merely mindless regurgitations from some publicity office of a party-line handed down from on high, or a knee-jerk initial guess, is wholly without evidence.

It also confirms that the Range Rover Sport (and there was a 2014 version that did have a lithium ion battery, although I accept this one did not)...

And that means we should be done. You originally proposed that the initial vehicle was some form of electric vehicle and that this fact has been covered up. There remains absolutely no evidence in favor of such a finding. That you now want to cast about for a new conspiracy theory, or thump your chest over some inconsequential observation is the evidence that you are a conspiracy theorist first and a seeker after truth a distant second, if at all.

...on arriving at the car park was emitting white smoke from under its bonnet. So the smoke was light-coloured and not an error of the colour spectrum settings on one's laptop.

You're conflating two things you got wrong for different reasons, trying to make it seem like you were right about something.

Your argument regarding the color of smoke had only somewhat to do with image interpretation. You claimed the smoke was the wrong color (white or gray) to be diesel smoke, but no one materially contradicted you on the color of the smoke. As a matter of fact, free-burning diesel under most stoichiometric regimes produces white to gray smoke. Black smoke occurs in the combustion of diesel fuel only when the combustion is incomplete, which may occur, for example, in a diesel motor that is suddenly throttled up. The same occurs with almost all other light hydrocarbon fuels. But the salient point remains that you merely assumed the smoke in all cases was from diesel fuel. You have been utterly impervious to the notion that not all smoke in a fire comes from the one source you imagine, or which is forefront in your mind. "I was right about the smoke," is thoroughly disingenuous. Finally, light or dark is a luminosity argument, not a chromaticity argument. "Spectrum" does not apply.

Where spectrum does apply, however, is in your argument regarding the color of the flames, which you declare according to your own presumption of infallibility are characteristic of lithium ion fires. Since you did not apply proper image analysis controls, your judgment is not supported by the evidence. It fails also for foundation and other reasons.

I should have liked to have seen a recommendation that in future, such an observation - of smoke emanating from a car bonnet - in any arriving vehicle would be flagged and refused entry.

Your wishes are irrelevant. The report is not incorrect, suspicious, or deficient simply because it didn't address your personal beliefs.

I'd also have appreciated a detailed explanation of how the flames developed so rapidly but I am sure experts on youtube will be along shortly.

The experts have spoken. What transpires among YouTube attention seekers is irrelevant. Your lay belief that the fire should have developed differently is irrelevant. The report is not incorrect, suspicious, or deficient simply because it fails to address your misinformed beliefs.

Whilst the report is immaculately well-written, I thought the Merseyside Fire Brigade Report of 2018 was more comprehensive and better presented.

Irrelevant; this is not a literary society. The report is not incorrect, suspicious, or deficient because it fails to speak the way you want.

I was quite shocked...

Irrelevant.

An airport worker decided...

Irrelevant.

Biggest eyebrow raiser was the team of arriving firefighters who scoffed all of the food on their arrival...

Irrelevant.

It all seemed quite chaotic...

Your opinion is irrelevant.

As much as you're still trying to scrape together some semblance of impropriety, you are simply wrong. The fire was caused by a diesel car. There was no cover up. There was no terrorist. There was no ministerial machination.

 

[Steve]

I still think it looked like a lithium fire but I accept that despite confirming the smoke was white, it was diesel-only. But I'd still like to understand why it manifested as it did and why the blaze became so completely uncontrollable within minutes, when normally. a quick squirt of fire hydrant under the bonnet should have done the trick, or at least within twenty minutes of the time the Fire Brigade arrived.

However, whilst this is an interesting topic for me, I get that there are people here who are only here to 'call out' and mock.

It's a shame really that there cannot be a serious discussion.

There has been much serious discussion in this thread, regularly interrupted by one lone poster, who has no technical expertise in the initiation and propagation of fires, tossing in conspiracies, misdirections, accusations of wrong doing, and non sequiturs. That poster does not appear to have the capacity to understand things that have been explained many times over the course of these threads. The released report is complete, comprehensive, and accurate. There is nothing of any consequence left to discuss. Any further discussion would amount to nothing more than

 

[JayUtah]

I still think it looked like a lithium fire...

Irrelevant. It was not.

but I accept that despite confirming the smoke was white, it was diesel-only.

Diesel smoke is most often white to gray, but there is no reason to suppose the smoke in the image evidence was being produced by diesel combustion. In your attempt to claim victory for straining at the gnat, you've missed the fairly obvious camel: that you don't know what exactly was burning. If, for example, we hypothesize that the fire started in the car by electrical means, you could have been looking at the smoke from, say, burning electrical insulation.

But I'd still like to understand why it manifested as it did and why the blaze became so completely uncontrollable within minutes, when normally...

No, you are not qualified to declare what should have occurred. Real life is not somehow suspicious simply because it fails to meet your idle and simplistic preconceptions.

You declare the fire propagation to have been abnormal, on nothing more substantial than your own authority. Previously you used this as evidence that the initiating fire had to have been very intense, which you then attributed to the ferocity of a lithium ion fire. Now that your conclusion has been directly refuted, it's moot to consider further the line of reasoning you constructed to get to it.

However, whilst this is an interesting topic for me, I get that there are people here who are only here to 'call out' and mock.

I've used this thread to provide several substantive posts on various scientific topics that pertain to this incident and its investigation, and about forensic engineering in general—topics upon which I am a recognized expert. You ignored them entirely to waffle on about Rishi Sunak's "blind register." You show no actual interest in the topic.

You are not on the high moral ground here. You declared yourself to be Curious Turkey and that the impressions of all the rest of the turkeys in this thread were naive and unworthy of serious consideration.

It's a shame really that there cannot be a serious discussion.

You're the only one trying to turn it into some kind of conspiracy theory. Any serious discussion of the Luton fire has had to weave a torturous path around your self-serving conspiracy mongering.

 

[Rolfe]

I've been reading this thread right from the beginning, even before Darat moved it to Conspiracy Theories, and what can I say but it has been a very slow motion car crash. The year, make, model and colour of the car were in the public domain from a very early stage, and the rest was just so much hand-waving.

The real denial that's going on relates to the frequency of ICE vehicle fires. These are really really common. So common that if you just enter into Google the number of a UK road, or even a county, and the words "vehicle fire", you'll be overwhelmed with results. Many of these are from small local newspapers needing something to fill their pages, and even so they usually incorporate a "local angle" in the story, like "local mum's lucky escape" or "bus route diverted on Tuesday". The reason is that these things are happening all the bloody time. Stats say 300 vehicles per DAY. So it's hard to make them news.

EV fires on the other hand, are uncommon. Stats vary, but it's something like 20 to 60 times less likely that an EV will go on fire than an ICE car. And such has been the catastrophising of conspiracy theorists like Vixen, that these are NEWS. And the public run away with the idea that EVs are a huge fire risk. Which they manifestly are not. It makes no sense at all to jump to the conclusion, when we hear about a fire caused by a vehicle, that this is an EV. But that's where we are, thanks to this skewed perspective.

It has been the case that EV fires got the reputation of being hard (or even impossible) to extinguish, but this is to a large extent a result of firefighters not being trained in the best way to approach these incidents. Indeed, of the "best way" still being under development, given that the technology is relatively new. Things are changing however, and firefighters are being trained to deal with these as chemical fires where depriving the fire of oxygen is not the way to go. There are a number of videos on YouTube demonstrating how to put out an EV fire, and it's not that scary.

There is good reason to believe that the advent of EVs will make vehicle fires a much smaller risk than previously. First, the actual number of incidents is demonstrably falling in countries where EV adoption is high, simply to reflect that "20 to 60 times less likely to catch fire" thing. Second, the fires usually develop more slowly than ICE fires, giving time for people to escape or be rescued. Third, the actual amount of energy in a car battery is vastly less than in a tank of petrol or (even more so) diesel. A huge benefit is the absence of these "running fires" of burning fuel that are referred to several times in the Luton report, and which rapidly set light to vehicles a fair distance from the vehicle whose fuel has escaped. But that doesn't suit the narrative.

There's also a lot of misconception about what exactly is involved in an EV fire. These can be divided into three broad categories. The commonest category, by a long way, doesn't involve the battery burning at all. The fire starts elsewhere, either outside the car (maybe it has been parked next to another car that caught fire, or it's in an integral garage in a house that caught fire) or inside the car but not involving the battery (someone dropped a cigarette end, or there was a fault in the 12v electrical system - as may have been the case in the Luton fire, with the diesel car). In the great majority of cases, the battery of the car doesn't catch fire at all. The car (or even the house) burns down around the battery, which remains intact. This seems to have been what happened in the Swedish incident. The EVs involved burned like cars, except (unlike ICE cars) their fuel source didn't contribute to the intensity of the fire. The batteries were still there, intact, in the ashes, at the end of it all. There is a video on YouTube of a guy checking out his ruined Tesla after it was involved in a house fire, and the remote control was still able to open the tailgate.

So of all these EV fires (20 to 60 times less frequent than ICE fires), in the majority the battery simply wasn't involved in the fire at all, and the fire was as a consequence much less destructive than a typical ICE fire.

The next category is EVs where the cause of the fire is not the HV battery, but nevertheless the HV battery does start to burn as a result. These are often the result of crashes, where the battery has been damaged in the crash. Nasty affairs, but for the reasons given above, usually less scary than similar ICE cars. (Indeed, there are also videos around of crashes between Teslas and ICE cars, where the Tesla is sitting there going "ouch" over a smashed wing, while the ICE car beside it is in flames.) Usually time for people to get clear, less stored energy to fuel the fire, and techniques of fire-fighting getting better all the time.

The smallest category of all in EV fires is the one where the HV battery itself is the source of the fire. It's very rare. Most of the cases are attributable to a known fault, the main example being the Jaguar iPace, which was subject to a recall because of this. Aside from these known recall-triggering faults, HV batteries going into spontaneous thermal runaway is really really rare. There is an Australian group keeping stats on all this and I was gobsmacked by how low the numbers were. And that the cars were (almost?) never on charge when it happened.

So it's all really good news going forward. Not only are car parks being made safer by the incorporation of sprinkler systems and so on, but the likelihood of destructive fires is getting less and less as a larger and larger percentage of the car fleet goes over to EVs. They're 20 to 60 times less likely to catch fire in the first place. They don't produce running fires of liquid fuel that spread (literally) like wildfire along gutters and through drains. And the slower development of the fires makes it much more likely that the firefighters will be able to control them before they engulf an entire car park.

But this doesn't make the anti-EV conspiracy theorists happy, for some peculiar reason.

 

[Rolfe]

As regards the colour of the smoke, there is zero possibility that the car's fuel tank, or indeed any of the fuel in the car, was burning at the time it was driven through the entrance barrier. It was driven three floors up after that point! A car is pretty much going to be a ball of flame before the fuel tank melts and the extremely hot fuel escapes and contributes to the fire (and runs under adjacent cars, setting them on fire). I very much doubt that any diesel was burning in that car even at the point when people were taking photos and videos of it sitting on the third floor, after attempts to fight the fire had been abandoned.

It's not just a case of "things other than diesel were contributing to the combustion", but that the diesel wasn't actually alight at that point in the first place.

 

[JayUtah]

As regards the colour of the smoke, there is zero possibility that the car's fuel tank, or indeed any of the fuel in the car, was burning at the time it was driven through the entrance barrier.

Agreed. Without additional evidence, I'd say the most likely culprit is electrical insulation at or near the site of a short circuit.

 

[theprestige]

Agreed. Without additional evidence, I'd say the most likely culprit is electrical insulation at or near the site of a short circuit.

Have you considered the possibility of a fault in the electric motor or lithium-ion battery?

 

[JayUtah]

Have you considered the possibility of a fault in the electric motor or lithium-ion battery?

Get thee hence!

I would, if the vehicle had been provisioned with either.

 

[Rolfe]

Get thee hence!

I would, if the vehicle had been provisioned with either.

Well, there's a fair chance the driver had his mobile phone in the car, in which case it would have been provisioned with a lithium-ion battery. On the other hand, since the driver was able to call 999 after he got out of the car, that's probably reasonable evidence that wasn't the cause of the fire either.

 

[Metullus]

Well, there's a fair chance the driver had his mobile phone in the car, in which case it would have been provisioned with a lithium-ion battery. On the other hand, since the driver was able to call 999 after he got out of the car, that's probably reasonable evidence that wasn't the cause of the fire either.

Unless he had a burner phone...

 

[novaphile]

Indeed the report makes plain that the official statements from the fire services were expected to be taken as such, not written off as allegedly only from "Jenny in communications." Obviously the conspiracy crowd heard and read the statements at the time. But they concocted all sorts of fictitious reasons for not being obliged to regard them. Once you've asserted the premise that the Powers That Be are lying, you can spread that conspiracy Vegemite all over anything, including the integrity of the final report.

The goal of conspiracy mongering is not to argue an alternative that should be accepted. Instead it's to perpetuate the self-perceived relevance of the conspiracy theorist. Toward that end, conspiracy mongering is about any alternative. In fine, it's about the conspiracy theorist's asserted ability to detect lies from people in authority, regardless of how those imagined lies might change from day to day. And then paradoxically, it's about whatever lie the conspiracy theorist has to tell from day to day to maintain the illusion that they are a relevant genius.

The easiest way to maintain the illusion of relevance is to focus on decreasingly significant details about which either some genuine (albeit inconsequential) controversy can be maintained, or on which no resolution from evidence is available—thus relegating the discussion to endless speculation and hypothesization. The goal is to bog down in details, not to arrive at a conclusion. The conclusion is clear: there was no lithium ion battery at fault, no coverup of EV horrors. There is no need to reach for blind trusts or offshore corporations or wink-wink-nudge-nudge good ol' boy tactics. Properly viewed, the evidence is entirely conclusive.

Oi!

Settle down there cobber, you can't besmirch Vegemite mate, that's fighting words!

 

[Disbelief]

I still think it looked like a lithium fire but I accept that despite confirming the smoke was white, it was diesel-only. But I'd still like to understand why it manifested as it did and why the blaze became so completely uncontrollable within minutes, when normally. a quick squirt of fire hydrant under the bonnet should have done the trick, or at least within twenty minutes of the time the Fire Brigade arrived.

However, whilst this is an interesting topic for me, I get that there are people here who are only here to 'call out' and mock.

It's a shame really that there cannot be a serious discussion.

There was a lot of good discussion here, but you insisted on derailing and making declarations without the appropriate knowledge or training. Even in this post, you make a declaration about how a fire is easily extinguished when you have no idea how involved it was when it was first being addressed. Instead of trying to learn something, you decided you knew more than everyone here. In the end, you were very mistaken.

 

[Rolfe]

"A quick squirt of fire hydrant under the bonnet..."

Where do we even start with that? Isn't a fire hydrant one of these things you see on American roads that the fire trucks connect to when they need water?

Presuming she meant fire extinguisher, a quick squirt under the bonnet is enough to put out an engine fire? Really? How come there are so many of these fires then, if they're so easy to put out? But seriously, don't open the bonnet if your car has an engine fire, you know what a good air supply does to fires.

 

[zooterkin]

"A quick squirt of fire hydrant under the bonnet..."

Where do we even start with that? Isn't a fire hydrant one of these things you see on American roads that the fire trucks connect to when they need water?

Presuming she meant fire extinguisher, a quick squirt under the bonnet is enough to put out an engine fire? Really? How come there are so many of these fires then, if they're so easy to put out? But seriously, don't open the bonnet if your car has an engine fire, you know what a good air supply does to fires.

Yes, Vixen is using the wrong word, but fire hydrants are standard in the UK, too, used to supply water for the fire service. Look out for the yellow signs with a large black H. https://www.cambsfire.gov.uk/community-safety/hydrants/

 

[theprestige]

Apparently UKian hydrants are installed below the grade, instead of above it. Thus, presumably, the need for additional signage.