Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire IV

Vixen said:
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 ...
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Calling it "diesel-only" might be an obvious source of your misunderstanding. There was no lithium battery but that does not mean the only thing in the car which could burn was diesel fuel. As you already know, the fire probably started as an electrical fire in the 12V system. There are plenty of plastic parts and fluids other than fuel which can burn in a modern car.

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.
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I don't believe you have any basis to claim that is "normally" the case. There were 4 cars reported ablaze before the Fire Brigade even arrived and approx 25 reported involved within half an hour. You're not going to put that conflagration out with a squirt from a fire extinguisher.

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.
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If you want to have a serious discussion, maybe drop the crap about everything the fire service reported being "PR" etc.
 
JayUtah said:
Get thee hence! :D

I would, if the vehicle had been provisioned with either.
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There are loads of electric motors in ICE cars: the starter motor, the windscreen wiper motor, the screen wash pump motor, the electric window motors, power steering motor (my car has electric power steering)...
 
catsmate said:
This is an excellent summary of the situation.
I posted much of this previously, regarding vehicle fire stats and the main risk of a battery fire being collision damage. It was, of course, ignored.


As a slightly OT addendum, having completed my fire-fighting refresher course at work, there is more emphasis on Li-ion battery fires simply because that battery technology is more common.
The main cause of such fires are not cars or small consumer electronics (e.g. notebooks) but intermediate size devices such as e-scooters, which are frequently of shoddy and illegally unsafe standards, to the extent that my employers are restricting when they can be stored for charging on-prem. There are no such restrictions for EVs.
I believe the UK sees proportionately far more e-bike.scooter fires than e-car fires.

Dedicated Li-ion extinguishers, such as AVD, are also becoming more common, though the classic pairing of water/CO2 is still the standard, and water is still recommended for Li-ion fires.
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I believe there has been an issue with the presentation of statistics, whereby all these e-bike and e-scooter fires were reported in a single group with electric car fires as "electric vehicle fires". The fire brigade have said they're going to disaggregate the stats going forward, but the inflated figures have been the source of a number of YouTube rants about these things "always catching fire".
 
Vixen said:
The flames were from the engine bay via an electrical fault, as an AA boffin said 11 Oct 2023 was the 'most likely cause'. For it to be a diesel fire the diesel would have had to have been leaked from somewhere.

Can you explain why the flames in the video appear to be spurting outwards, with no black smoke (as we would have in a diesel fire) at the side, and with what is grey or white smoke, or vapour. In addition, the flames appear to emanate from beneath the car and are yellow/crimson in colour.

How does this fit in with your diesel hypothesis and why would the flames look like classic lithium flames if it was a diesel only vehicle?
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Fuel lines will provide the leak. Why do you expect there to be black smoke from a diesel fire?
 
Vixen said:
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.
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Diesel smoke is usually white or grey.

What colour do you think it should have been?
 
As for the way the smoke was emitted, while the engine was running there was a large fan under the bonnet for the radiator, it exits through the gills on either side of the engine compartment and from the underside. What do you think the smoke from the engine bay fire would do?
 
jeremyp said:
There are loads of electric motors in ICE cars: the starter motor, the windscreen wiper motor, the screen wash pump motor, the electric window motors, power steering motor (my car has electric power steering)...
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Absolutely, but the context suggested he was facetiously talking about the (nonexistent) drive motor. I took his comment as a wind-up, but provided a serious answer just in case.

If you want to look to a car's 12 VDC system for answers, literally any component, connector, or cable run is a legitimate culprit for a short circuit that can start a fire. We don't even have to limit it to the number of electromotive devices in a diesel car. The headlamps can start a fire.
 
Rolfe said:
I believe there has been an issue with the presentation of statistics, whereby all these e-bike and e-scooter fires were reported in a single group with electric car fires as "electric vehicle fires". The fire brigade have said they're going to disaggregate the stats going forward, but the inflated figures have been the source of a number of YouTube rants about these things "always catching fire".
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So I've noticed, though there are stats (somewhere I must look through my notes) on ebike/scooter fires. Which are worryingly common.
 
JayUtah said:
Absolutely, but the context suggested he was facetiously talking about the (nonexistent) drive motor. I took his comment as a wind-up, but provided a serious answer just in case.

If you want to look to a car's 12 VDC system for answers, literally any component, connector, or cable run is a legitimate culprit for a short circuit that can start a fire. We don't even have to limit it to the number of electromotive devices in a diesel car. The headlamps can start a fire.
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In Ye Olde Days, dropping the cigarette lighter on the flammable plastic fibre carpet....
 
Andy_Ross said:
No, a dry riser is a dry water pipe in a building that is there for the fire brigade to attach hoses to.

[qimg]https://i.postimg.cc/GtCnwh07/teaserbox-10343129.jpg[/qimg]
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... And mentioned in the report that they initially used the dry riser to supply water to the 3rd floor at the northwest stairwell. (Except that part of the report has a mistake which makes it confusing, as they describe being unable to access the northwest stairwell from the outside without a key, so using the northwest stairwell instead.) Then deciding one 150mm dry riser pipe would not supply enough water to deal with a fire of this size.

Regarding hydrants, I'm familiar with the "H" signs but have never seen one with a "thataway" arrow pointing to where the hydrant is set into the pavement. I've only ever seen them with the hydrant directly in front of the H. Quite a lot of them, if they're substantial metal ones firmly attached to buildings, are still old pre-metric types, with the pipe size in inches and distance in feet.
 
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Anyone Googling fire hydrant history will find multiple sources clamouring to tell them it's not known for certain who invented the (above ground) fire hydrant as the original patent was destroyed in a fire.
 
jeremyp said:
There are loads of electric motors in ICE cars: the starter motor, the windscreen wiper motor, the screen wash pump motor, the electric window motors, power steering motor (my car has electric power steering)...
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Yes, but do they have an electrical supply?

Vixen said:
Diesel/Petrol cars have been manufactured for 137 years. The manufacturers have developed all kinds of safety features, such as the fuel tank at the back of the vehicle, well away from the 12V electrics towards the front.
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P.J. Denyer said:
If all the 12v electrics are at the front, what powers the brake lights, reversing lights, fog lights and number plate lights at the back? Candles?
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Vixen said:
Er, you get out of your car and make your way to the back, to switch on the reverse, brake, fog and number plate lights..? And when it starts raining you stop the car, exit it and set the operation for the back windscreen wipers..? Or do you have the kids sitting in the back seat to do all of this for you?

"Tarquin, would you mind switching on the brake lights as I am about to slow down - "

<sfx screeching of tyres CRASH!!!>
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catsmate said:
We still call them dry risers.
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Oh, that makes sense now! Fire hydrant is a term I've only associated with the US. I've been seeing "dry riser" signs, and these little yellow plaques with the H on them, all my life and not really wondered what they were for!
 
If all that seems confusing, here's a high-level fly-by (using U.S. nomenclature).

Dry risers (or often just "risers") are the street-level entrance a building's internal high-volume fire suppression system, meant to be used by fire fighters. They're dry because there's no water supply connected to them on an ongoing basis, and likely no water in them at all. They're "risers" because they're generally built as one or two large vertical pipes that rise the whole height of the building—usually in a stairwell—and have horizontal branches or just taps on each floor. This makes it easily to isolate and protect fire fighting plumbing, since stairwells are often the most substantially built structure in a building. It also makes it easier to drain the system at the end of fighting a fire, providing the building has survived and remains fit for occupancy.

Note that this is very different from automatic fire suppression water, which is yet an entirely different set of plumbing and is connected full-time to a properly pressurized water supply ("wet risers"). Often a flow sensor in the automatic fire suppression system triggers a fire brigade alarm.

Hydrants are the streetside taps to the city water supply, usually the same as the city potable water mains. Hydrant pressure, however, is not hose pressure. Nor is it generally enough to send water up more than few floors in a building riser system with significant pressure.

That's where the fire engine comes in. The fire engine pump inlet is connected to the hydrant. The pump outlet is connected to the dry riser inlet, which is pictured in Andy's post. The high-powered pumps in the fire engine raise the pressure from hydrant pressure to hose pressure, or to the pressure required to deliver hose pressure to a point high in the building through the dry riser. Fire fighters can then enter the building, climb to the affected floor in the stairwell carrying unconnected hoses with them, then connect the hoses to the nearest tap in the dry riser system and fight the fire with appropriate hose pressure on the affected floors.

For small buildings, residences, buildings without dry risers, and (especially in Utah) grass or brush fires, fire fighters connect their hoses directly to the truck.
 
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Rolfe said:
Oh, that makes sense now! Fire hydrant is a term I've only associated with the US. I've been seeing "dry riser" signs, and these little yellow plaques with the H on them, all my life and not really wondered what they were for!
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No, Dry Risers are dry pipes in buildings for the fire brigade to connect their hoses to.
 
Rolfe said:
Oh, that makes sense now! Fire hydrant is a term I've only associated with the US. I've been seeing "dry riser" signs, and these little yellow plaques with the H on them, all my life and not really wondered what they were for!
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That's a very relevant point.

Fire suppression equipment is a significant part of any new, large building design. But from the building owner's perspective, it's rarely used and therefore something that should remain as unobtrusive as possible in favor of the building's day-to-day purpose. You don't necessarily want your high-end hotel to have prominent red piping along the ceilings, for example. Those requirements are naturally in tension with the need to for fire fighters to be able to quickly locate and operate the equipment when they arrive. Also, in the case of a false alarm on a wet riser system, you want your facilities people to have quick access to the riser valving to shut the water off and prevent damage. (Ask me how I know this.)

When we look at incidents like the Luton fire, the placement and marking of riser systems is a prominent part of the exercise, as well as the fire fighter training and information. Raising questions like whether riser intakes were hidden by landscaping, or in an inaccessible part of the building site, or were not sufficiently redundant become part of recommendations for building codes and fire fighter training.
 
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