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Cont: Luton Airport Car Park Fire part II

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JesseCuster said:
So you didn't claim that welding does not involve melting steel or that welding machines can't melt steel?

Vixen said:
I don't accept that using a welding kit in your living room would be able to heat steel up to 700°.
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Because you also said the following:So how does a welding kit work if it can't even raise the temperature of steel to within several hundred degrees of its melting point? :confused:
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Vixen simply tried to lie her way out of a remarkable display of ignorance regarding subjects about which she pretends to be knowledgeable enough to do detective work.
 
Vixen said:
Impression given being in the same sentence as their standing at the top of the plane steps.
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Standing at the top of the steps when getting off the plane which they had been on for a couple of hours but which could not depart due to the fire.
 
Has anybody mentioned yet that it was a diesel car that started the fire and that it has been confirmed?

(answer on page 94)

Compus
 
JesseCuster said:
What does that have to do with a consumer battery exploding when it's squashed by a hyrdaulic press? :confused:
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When the battery pack weighs as much as a duck, she's a witch! Don't you understand basic logic? If things have one point in common they're the same.

okay I don't know, but my explaination will be as valid & less condescending than the actual one, if it's ever forthcoming.
 
Vixen said:
Yes, and what normally triggers diesel to ignite? Pressure.
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So Li-ion batteries are filled with diesel oil? Seriously, WTF are you even arguing about?

And no, it's not "pressure", it's still heat. The compression stroke of a diesel engine rapidly heats the air/fuel charge to the ignition point. But in cold weather, diesels can be difficult to start, so they have heating elements called glow plugs that help ignite the air/fuel charge until the engine reaches a set operating temperature, and can continue running without the added help. The compression ratio is exactly the same when the engine is too cold to start, so "pressure" isn't what's doing it.

And, as we've already seen, diesel can also be ignited with a wooden match.

ETA: I should go into a bit more detail about how diesels work. The fuel isn't mixed with air before entering the cylinder during the intake stroke. It's injected, at high pressure into the cylinder near the top of the compression stroke.
 
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JayUtah said:
Design requirements for wheeled motor vehicle fuel tanks require a physical arrangement that directs any leakage to the ground, rather than allowing it to accumulate on any structure or surface of the vehicle. This is why you find them at the lowest point in many vehicle designs.
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Sure, but not usually projecting below the floor level of the passenger cabin, otherwise the tank would be vulnerable to impact with any object the car drove over. Set up into some void toward the rear behind the cabin is typical I think.

The point I was trying to make is to express my doubt there would be a clear line of sight for a piece of 'shrapnel' spat out of a burning hybrid battery to pierce the fuel tank.
 
CompusMentus said:
Has anybody mentioned yet that it was a diesel car that started the fire and that it has been confirmed?

(answer on page 94)

Compus
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We're still waiting for the fire service to rule out flux capacitors and infinite improbability drives.
 
Vixen said:
Cut straight to 6:57 to see how a couple of power tool lithium-ion batteries flame throw shrapnel at high velocity.
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I saw mostly sheets of flame and a few pieces of debris flying off. I didn't see anything I would call shrapnel. If you spotted anything shoot out so fast you think could have pierced a fuel tank please indicate where you see it, because I did not.

Thanks.
 
Vixen said:
The fire in the photograph appears to be confined to the front left of the car and towards the lower part. There is no smoke coming from the engine at the front or the fuel tank at the rear. The flames are orange and red with the grey smoke that is a classic of a lithium-ion fire. The driver was unable to extinguish it with a couple of fire extinguishers which would normally do the job, or failing that by the fire brigade who arrived very promptly - 'within eight minutes'.
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Oh? Like this hybrid vehicle on fire?

a-ford-fusion-hybrid-v.jpg


Classic gray smoke, right?

Anyway, is it your suggestion that the battery didn't catch any diesel on fire by the time this photo was taken? You say there is no smoke coming from the front in the photo below, but how can you tell? The photo is from the rear and the presence or absence of smoke from the engine compartment is obscured.

(Oops. I don't know how to link to her image, but it is the upper image in this post.)

If the vehicle is a diesel hybrid, then the diesel has to burn at some point. If the absence of black smoke is evidence it's not a diesel ICE, then it is also evidence that either it's not a diesel hybrid or the diesel hasn't caught yet. But the car is well aflame, so the latter seems unlikely to me.

So what happened here? I likely scenario IMV having looked at all of the possible facts available so far is that a thermal runaway started in a lithium-ion battery situated towards the front of the vehicle. This is uncontainable by ordinary means as it self-oxygenates, so the driver abandoned his attempts. A burning lithium-ion battery is not only intensely hot (up to 2,000°) - it is the size of a suitcase and is packed with cells - but it gives of projectiles of intense heat. A shrapnel from this lithium battery fire penetrated the diesel fuel tank, causing the hot vapours there, which are given off by the diesel at circa 100 °C, to ignite being within 10% of the flashpoint, causing a massive fireball and it is this fireball of intense heat together with the lithium-ion battery fire that caused rapid spread to other vehicles and causing the concrete and steel rebars to buckle, somehow causing the vehicles in the next roof top level to ignite, being completely open-air and fanned by windy weather. The evidence for this are witnesses describing flame being 'thrown'.
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Ah. So when was the fuel tank ruptured? Was it before or after this image was taken? If before, you have a problem, of course, but if after, then you seem awfully confident of an event that was not witnessed as far as we know.

Lithium-ion fires throw flames and become so hot, it explains why the floor beneath Vehicle Zero collapsed from the heat intensity. In addition, lithium-ion battery fires give off extremely noxious fumes and this explains why five personnel were immediately stricken by inhalation difficulties and the entire fire brigade having to withdraw from the building all together. If you recall, at Liverpool they were able to fight the fire from the stairwells for nigh on two hours before giving up. At Luton a major incident was declared just half an hour after their arrival.
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If all this were true and an amateur like you can deduce it from just a few still images, then clearly the fire brigade would have made the same inferences. Hence, when they say they believe it's a diesel (and hence, implicitly, not a hybrid), they are lying whether they add "pending verification" or not.

ETA: It's not that I doubt that diesel fires are often black. It just seems plausible to me that smoke color can vary due to a lot of factors, including the particular position of the photographer. Here's a big diesel engine burning and the smoke doesn't look particularly black.

10368943_708567769223116_4233148723253151924_o-1-640x480.jpg
 
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Vixen said:
We have been given little to no information at all. But think about it. The fire was on 10 October and the fellow was arrested 23 October. A nice fortnight's holiday in the sun, perhaps?
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I thought he was arrested in order to deflect any blame Land Rover might face (on the same day the fire brigade attributed the fire to "vehicle fault", but whatever).

Anyway, it's possible he really did leave immediately after his car caught fire and it's possible that he was arrested on the day he returned. It's possible, but we haven't any reason to think it's so yet. And if it is so, then all your theories that he was arrested as a distraction fall apart, because leaving the scene of what turned out to be a terrible fire caused by the driver's vehicle seems like a good reason to arrest the driver. Especially if the driver didn't call the fire brigade before leaving.

Again, we don't know any of this is the case, but simply the possibility that it is so is enough to weaken the claim that the arrest must have been a mere distraction.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
The car fire is just the excuse for a 'Look-At-Me' thread.
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Well the sunken ferry and the drowned woman didn't pan out so.....

Although maybe, just maybe, Vixen's unique ability to ferret out coverups where absolutely no one else is able will be recognized by expert investigators in all fields and she will become to "go to" for all such puzzles.





Nah.
 
Vixen said:
I took the lady's words at face value. It seems to be her perception that the car park floor collapsing was connected to her being about to fly off with Ryanair. I appreciate now that the reporter was likely condensing the Wexford lady's observations into one sentence to get her article to fit the '500 words' rule. This was misleading as it was in quotation marks as a verbatim comment.
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Blame the reporter without evidence all you like. The excerpt did not say or imply "almost immediately".

But let us not miss the point that the car park floor collapsed very quickly, given how new the building was, and built to withstand the weight of modern cars. The heat must have been extraordinarily intense, of an all together higher magnitude than the Liverpool one.
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Different buildings and different situations are, I think, different. The South Tower collapsed first on 9/11 despite being hit second. In total, the North Tower lasted more than 50% longer after its impact than the South Tower lasted after its own. So it goes.
 
Vixen said:
Yes, and what normally triggers diesel to ignite? Pressure.
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Vixen's absolutely right. There's pressure in the diesel engine cylinders which are mere feet from the hypothetical hybrid battery[1]. If even a smidgen of that pressure leaked, well, I wouldn't want to be there, I can tell you.

Alternatively, that electrical current is flowing hither and yon. If a bit splashes into the cylinder, same thing.

[1] And hypothetical lithium batteries are theoretically just as deadly as the real thing.
 
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phiwum said:
Vixen's absolutely right. There's pressure in the diesel engine cylinders which are mere feet from the hypothetical hybrid battery. If even a smidgen of that pressure leaked, well, I wouldn't want to be there, I can tell you.

Alternatively, that electrical current is flowing hither and yon. If a bit splashes into the cylinder, same thing.
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Not when its turned off.
 
phiwum said:
It is potential or latent pressure in that case. Just as dangerous in the right situations.
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Potential pressure :confused:

The fuel will liquify almost immediately, and not be anywhere near as combustible. The pressure in the cylinders will bleed off pretty quickly.

ETA: Also... .puncturing a combustion chamber is gonna take one helluva big piece of lithium ion "shrapnel".

ETA2: I think my sarcasm detector was malfunctioning lol
 
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So... the IRA put lithium-ion batteries inside the compression chamber of a diesel engine to distract us from the forged VIN plates. Very sneaky...
 
Vixen said:
...

So, all a car enthusiast needs to modify a diesel into a hybrid is the hybrid battery and some mechanical know how. Plus, of course, you need the relevant permissions and approval from DVLA to reregister it.
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Well this suggests to me that we can add 'hybrid vehicles' to the extremely long list of things that Vixen doesn't know anything about.

Here's the list of things that you have to change to convert a diesel Outlander to a hybrid Outlander (like mine).

1. Completely different engine. All the bearings in the new engine have to be ceramic coated. (Bonus points for anyone who knows why.)

2. Purpose-built GKN multi-mode e-Transmission (to do the job of sharing power to/from the engine including starting the engine via the generator.)

For those who are interested, here's a youtube showing how that piece of kit works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rntjceP-XPE

3. New electronics and generator (which does the job of starting the engine via the e-T as well as charging the battery).

4. New computers

5. Removal/discard of the entire drive train. (Gear box, transfer cases, differentials, drive shafts)

6. Completely new electric motors (2)

7. Completely new transfer cases (one per motor to spit the drive between each pair of wheels) and shafts/axles to connect between those TCs and the wheels.

8. The traction battery (the only part that Vixen knows about)

9. High voltage power system (the giant orange cables that carry traction power around the vehicle)

Note that there are also quite significant modifications to the body and floor pan to accommodate the traction battery and the two extra motors (the electric ones).

I've certainly not heard of anyone converting a diesel vehicle into a hybrid diesel/electric...

My instinct is that you'd save about thirty thousand pounds by just buying an existing one.

(Assuming that someone has made a kit for the conversion. If you have to pay GKN to make the e-T from scratch, and other engineering companies to design and build all the electronics and other kit for you from scratch, that extra cost for doing it yourself would probably jump up to about one hundred thousand pounds.)
 
^
Hey, be fair! Vixen covered all that with her comment "and some mechanical know how" ;)
 
novaphile said:
... Completely different engine. All the bearings in the new engine have to be ceramic coated. (Bonus points for anyone who knows why.)
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I don't know why but you have piqued my curiosity. Is it because of the increased number of start ups? (But then lots of newish cars have auto stop/start so perhaps not.)
 
GlennB said:
Traficom is Finnish. You can't get all those details online in the UK.
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Nor can you actually get the details Vixen claimed in Finland either. Finland, as an EU member, complies fully with GDPR, implemented in domestic law via their Data Protection Act 2019.
 
catsmate said:
Nor can you actually get the details Vixen claimed in Finland either. Finland, as an EU member, complies fully with GDPR, implemented in domestic law via their Data Protection Act 2019.
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Cheers. Interesting!
 
novaphile said:
Well this suggests to me that we can add 'hybrid vehicles' to the extremely long list of things that Vixen doesn't know anything about.

Here's the list of things that you have to change to convert a diesel Outlander to a hybrid Outlander (like mine).

. Completely different engine. All the bearings in the new engine have to be ceramic coated. (Bonus points for anyone who knows why.)
Click to expand...

Lack of oil lubrication when running on electric power?

2. Purpose-built GKN multi-mode e-Transmission (to do the job of sharing power to/from the engine including starting the engine via the generator.)

For those who are interested, here's a youtube showing how that piece of kit works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rntjceP-XPE

3. New electronics and generator (which does the job of starting the engine via the e-T as well as charging the battery).

4. New computers

5. Removal/discard of the entire drive train. (Gear box, transfer cases, differentials, drive shafts)

6. Completely new electric motors (2)

7. Completely new transfer cases (one per motor to spit the drive between each pair of wheels) and shafts/axles to connect between those TCs and the wheels.

8. The traction battery (the only part that Vixen knows about)

9. High voltage power system (the giant orange cables that carry traction power around the vehicle)

Note that there are also quite significant modifications to the body and floor pan to accommodate the traction battery and the two extra motors (the electric ones).

I've certainly not heard of anyone converting a diesel vehicle into a hybrid diesel/electric...

My instinct is that you'd save about thirty thousand pounds by just buying an existing one.

(Assuming that someone has made a kit for the conversion. If you have to pay GKN to make the e-T from scratch, and other engineering companies to design and build all the electronics and other kit for you from scratch, that extra cost for doing it yourself would probably jump up to about one hundred thousand pounds.)
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Backyard tinkerers, mate. It's just like fixing a toaster. No, really.
 
Foster Zygote said:
You're like some Apollo hoaxer going on about the Van Allen radiation belts, with a completely overblown misconception of the phenomenon. Li-ion battery packs don't have Michael Bay style antimatter meltdowns like you obviously imagine. They don't melt through concrete floors and consume whole parking garages like some runaway fusion reaction. Li-ion batteries are hard to extinguish, but they don't burn any worse than an ICE vehicle. Ironically, for your argument, diesel burns hotter than gasoline, making the diesel Land Rover you're trying to dismiss as harmless about the worst thing that could have caught fire in that location, especially if it had a fairly full fuel tank.
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This guy here captured the moment a car fell through the floor bursting into a huge fireball. Stop being in denial.


https://x.com/RobsonOReardon/status/1711868144438927380?s=20


"Robson O'Reardon��
@RobsonOReardon
Looks like the whole car park has just fallen down through the flames!

#LutonAirport"

Note the time: 23:15 BST - less than two hours after a major incident was declared. (Which was 21:38.)

Liverpool ECHO car park, King's Dock did not actually collapse like this, although floors sunk in the middle.
 
phiwum said:
Oh? Like this hybrid vehicle on fire?

[qimg]https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2022/a-ford-fusion-hybrid-v.jpg[/qimg]

Classic gray smoke, right?

Anyway, is it your suggestion that the battery didn't catch any diesel on fire by the time this photo was taken? You say there is no smoke coming from the front in the photo below, but how can you tell? The photo is from the rear and the presence or absence of smoke from the engine compartment is obscured.

(Oops. I don't know how to link to her image, but it is the upper image in this post.)

If the vehicle is a diesel hybrid, then the diesel has to burn at some point. If the absence of black smoke is evidence it's not a diesel ICE, then it is also evidence that either it's not a diesel hybrid or the diesel hasn't caught yet. But the car is well aflame, so the latter seems unlikely to me.



Ah. So when was the fuel tank ruptured? Was it before or after this image was taken? If before, you have a problem, of course, but if after, then you seem awfully confident of an event that was not witnessed as far as we know.



If all this were true and an amateur like you can deduce it from just a few still images, then clearly the fire brigade would have made the same inferences. Hence, when they say they believe it's a diesel (and hence, implicitly, not a hybrid), they are lying whether they add "pending verification" or not.

ETA: It's not that I doubt that diesel fires are often black. It just seems plausible to me that smoke color can vary due to a lot of factors, including the particular position of the photographer. Here's a big diesel engine burning and the smoke doesn't look particularly black.

[qimg]http://speednik.com/files/2014/06/10368943_708567769223116_4233148723253151924_o-1-640x480.jpg[/qimg]
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Those ones obviously reached the fuel tank, hence the heavy hydrocarbons. The picture in the CCTV does not show this type of smoke as of that stage.
 
phiwum said:
I thought he was arrested in order to deflect any blame Land Rover might face (on the same day the fire brigade attributed the fire to "vehicle fault", but whatever).

Anyway, it's possible he really did leave immediately after his car caught fire and it's possible that he was arrested on the day he returned. It's possible, but we haven't any reason to think it's so yet. And if it is so, then all your theories that he was arrested as a distraction fall apart, because leaving the scene of what turned out to be a terrible fire caused by the driver's vehicle seems like a good reason to arrest the driver. Especially if the driver didn't call the fire brigade before leaving.

Again, we don't know any of this is the case, but simply the possibility that it is so is enough to weaken the claim that the arrest must have been a mere distraction.
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It is not mutually exclusive for him to be under suspicion of criminal damage and at the same time the fire 'was caused by a faulty vehicle'. This is what you have been told officially.

Imagine if the fault was Jaguar Land Rover's all along and they tried to pin it on this poor guy whose only 'crime' was to jump out of THEIR defective name-protected vehicle.
 
phiwum said:
Blame the reporter without evidence all you like. The excerpt did not say or imply "almost immediately".



Different buildings and different situations are, I think, different. The South Tower collapsed first on 9/11 despite being hit second. In total, the North Tower lasted more than 50% longer after its impact than the South Tower lasted after its own. So it goes.
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From this link here, you can see that the building was completely ablaze on all levels within one and a half hours. In the Liverpool ECHO car park fire, after two hours it had only spread to the next floor up.

https://x.com/RobsonOReardon/status/1711868144438927380?s=20
 
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catsmate said:
Nor can you actually get the details Vixen claimed in Finland either. Finland, as an EU member, complies fully with GDPR, implemented in domestic law via their Data Protection Act 2019.
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What is this service here then?

https://02rekkari.fi/?gad=1&gclid=C...BAlFzG39S4maICgDtPMBB2tKP3DWnEHoaAgwIEALw_wcB

Last I studied the DPA and ICO requirements, my understanding is that whilst keeping personal records of someone has to be done with their consent, there is no breach of the privacy laws by simply keeping a list of names and addresses.


Here, you can ring up the population centre and request anyone's address.

The UK DVLA's inability to give you information of the owner from the number plate is probably more to do with 'cant be bothered' than any concern about GDPR or 'security'.
 
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