California firefighters had to douse a flaming battery in a Tesla Semi with about 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of water to extinguish flames after a crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.
In addition to the huge amount of water, firefighters used an aircraft to drop fire retardant on the “immediate area” of the electric truck as a precautionary measure, the agency said in a preliminary report.
Firefighters said previously that the battery reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 Celsius) while it was in flames.
The NTSB sent investigators to the Aug. 19 crash along Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento. The agency said it would look into fire risks posed by the truck’s large lithium-ion battery.
Our town had to use an excavator and dozer to bury a Tesla car because it wouldn’t stop burning.
I read in a firefighter’s thread that the trick is to use a low pressure spray directly on the battery compartment. (It was a thread about Tesla cars not semis though so that might not apply)
The reason was you can’t actually put the fire out, it’s self oxidizing (it can literally burn underwater) so you basically need to wait till it burns itself out. Fortunately batteries only hold something like 1/10th the energy of gasoline and can’t release that energy as quickly so a fine light spray is enough to keep it from getting hot enough to catch anything else on fire including batteries in the surrounding battery modules.
Takes a long time, like hours to get it to a point they can move the vehicle and literally a couple weeks before the reaction completely fizzles out. They have special lots they tow them to where the car can fizzle itself out without damaging anything surrounding it.
Is water the best choice for a chemical fire?
Maybe. Water is cheap, available in quantity, and non-polluting. Since a battery fire is self-oxygenating, I don’t think putting it out is something you expect. All you can do is take away the heat both to contain the damage and to eventually stop the reaction.
I don’t think so, but what else are you gonna do? Can’t really submerge it in foam at a moments notice like you’re supposed to
The nords figured out you can put it out immersing it in salt water. Pretty self explanatory.
But it the most available and least toxic fire suppression, especially on a highway.
Foam is full of PFAS, etc and the cost (in CO2 and money) of air dropping, and having to wash the foam off the highway afterwards - leading to runoff - is huge.
Imagine that happening 100 times per day on American highways (when electric trucks become commonly used).
This is a very confident statement. Surely you have the qualifications and certifications to back up your confidence?
How about a google search then you dunce:
“water should not be used on fires involving electrical equipment, grease, or certain types of chemicals.”
How much is this in Capri Suns?
950,000 Capri Suns
(200ml per Capri sun, 5 Capri sun per litre, 190,000 litres water)
But it would take a long time to open each packet and spray it on the fire.
But it would take a long time to open each packet and spray it on the fire.
- Lay the Capri Suns in the ground next to the fire
- Get another semi truck
- Drive over the packets to squish out the liquid onto the fire
- If the additional semi truck catches fire as well, repeat from step 1
There’s 5 200ml Capri Suns to a liter. At about 190,000 liters, we’re looking at about 950,000 Capri Suns.
I went through “Bedrijfshulpverlening” (Dutch, if you want to run it through translate just in case I mess up the correct translation). I guess it’s business first responder or something.
When we were attending the fire training part and we were teached about fires, someone asked “what if there is a car fire”. They said: “starting petrol car fires can be extinguished with a portable extinguisher if you are lucky. But electric car fires, leave them alone. They seal the cars in special water-filled containers and leave them alone for two weeks. There are reports that even after the two weeks, when the car was retrieved from the water, the fire started again on it’s own. Firefighters really hate electric vehicles”.
Lithium is a metal right? Putting water on a metal fire usually just makes the fire worse.
Lithium isn’t just a metal it’s a metal that has a rapid exothermic reaction with water. Or at least that’s what I remember my high school Chem teacher saying.
That’s when it’s not even on fire, right? Like pure sodium or aluminium (I forget which one combusts in water and which was just the air)?
You are right, but in the case of a Lithium battery fire the strategy is to use the large thermal capacity of water to cool the battery until the reaction is done.
I just remembered i can even name myself as a source when i fucked up and punctured my phone battery while disassembling it (those dumbasses used large amounts of adhesives to mount the battery and i wasn’t careful enough). I simply dropped it into a bucket of water and waited it out.
business first responder
"alright, is everyone here? this is an all-hands meeting. Where is Joey? Is he in the bathroom again? He’s missed the last 3 meetings… Anyway. Top of the agenda, there’s apparently a fire, right over there. Fires are kinda hot and so we have been sure to stay a good distance away, as to not raise the temperature of everyone’s complimentary bottled water, handed out at this meeting.
Now it says here that we should tackle this situation as quickly as possible. Has anyone run the numbers by the finance team? We don’t want to spend too much on this. The big-wigs upstairs never think about the big picture, and really I don’t see why one fire is worth pivoting all our available resources. Samantha, yes?"
“Sir, the fire is growing at an alarming rate, shouldn’t we just postpone the meeting and focus on the fire?”
“See, that’s exactly the kind of thinking the execs have. But if we spend all our resources, cuts will be made, and jobs will be lost. Not mine, of course, but others. Did anyone do a PR analysis on us ‘putting out this fire’ versus just running a week-long ‘we are sorry’ ad campaign?”
(lol I just got the thought and ran with it)
Firefighter here. Sometimes a better and less harmful option is to let things burn and protect the area. I went to a semi wreck that was hauling diesel and on fire on its side in the grassy median about 100’ away from a storm drain. Trying to put that out with just water would have become an environmental nightmare if all that fuel would have gotten washed into the storm system.
“But electric bad” is what this kind of news will make rednecks think, and they will over sentionalize the conflagration of an ev battery
My primary is a prius and I’ve done auto work and tech repairs for like 25 years now.
I’m not buying an all electric EV, yet. They’re still wasteful and heavy and the battery tech isn’t quite good enough. EV’s pretty much have a life of 15 years on them (after going through tires faster) and then off to the junkyard once the battery goes out. I have high hopes for the solid state batts from Samsung hitting some production EV’s in 2027, though. Lighter, faster to charge, and longer lifespans. Until that, I’m sticking to hybrids, where the battery is less than 100 pounds, cost a few grand instead of $15,000 and you can swap one out at home in an afternoon with no special/expensive equipment.
