Luton airport...

plasmahal said:
Do you understand how diesel combusts???
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Yes. Ask yourself - how does a concrete car park catch on fire?

The diesel doesn't combust and vaporise like petrol would, or burn intensely in one place like an EV would. Instead it will pool below the car and run along the floor and the drainage channels, creating a river of fire.

Older diesels used to have metal fuel tanks. It's more common for these to be plastic now. Plastic melts.
 
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JonRGV250 said:
Please explain further.
I’ll give you a clue, diesel is a compression ignition fuel.
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I’ve lit diesel with a match. It also spread more and burns more widely. Petrol tends to just vaporise. Looking at the footage the diesel fire started and then the fuel tank exploded which set all the cars around it on fire.
 
div0 said:
So you're saying there must have been no electric vehicles which subsequently caught fire either?! That seems unlikely....




But... I hear EV fires are almost impossible to put out. Even for people trained to extinguish fire for a living.
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No, I'm not saying that.

An EV burning, is not the same as an EV which started the fire.

EVs, like ALL cars, are made of a variety of materials, some of which are flammable. There's a big difference between an EV battery burning, and other element of the vehicle being on fire. Lithium battery fires are ALMOST impossible to stop once started, until they have burned themselves out.

If an external ignition source causes some of the vehicle materials to ignite, but not the batteries themselves (which is entirely plausible) then they are more easily extinguished than a regular ICE car fire because there is no flammable liquid to burn as well as the vehicle itself.

Actually, the news report I linked to specifically menitons one of the firemen stating that a number of EVs were also caught up in the blaze.
 
I mean, you can keep nagging me, or just read the after incident report following the Liverpool fire.

www.newcivilengineer.com

Liverpool car park fire a 'perfect storm' | New Civil Engineer

Alasdair Beal, principal associate civil and structural engineer at civil engineering consultancy Thomasons, said he believes changes to the way cars are
www.newcivilengineer.com www.newcivilengineer.com


To avoid the paywall, I'll quote....

Alasdair Beal, principal associate civil and structural engineer at civil engineering consultancy Thomasons, said he believes changes to the way cars are designed may mean that current structural design guidelines for car parks need updating.

"cars are now designed with plastic fuel tanks. These burn through more quickly than steel tanks, releasing fuel onto the structure of the car park."

"an increase in the use of diesel cars would be different to the assumptions on which the design guidance for the structure was based. In a fire, he said, diesel tends to form burning pools and rivers rather than vaporising and exploding like petrol. This would also have allowed the fire to spread more easily."

"cars had become wider, their components more flammable, and the fuel tank size had increased"
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And I suppose most pertinently - from this 2018 article....
“It’s a warning – if it could happen there once, it could happen again,” said Beal. “If the analysis is right, then it means that the risk of fire is now much greater than it was before, and that applies to both new and existing ones.
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Diddums said:
lol you've got as much chance of water catching fire as you do diesel
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And yet this fire was started by a diesel.

Diesel needs a prolonged heat for it to reach its flash point and ignite and it is possible an electrical or turbo fault causes the initial fire. But once it was started and the diesel has ignited, then all the conditions were met for the fire to spread.

Or to put it into simpler terms. Comparing the combustible nature of diesel to water is a very poor comparison.
 
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