h/t Davlar and Yooper; Flooded electric vehicle fires on a scale firefighters have never faced before, according to Florida’s top fire marshal Jimmy Patronis.
Flooded Electric Vehicles Spontaneously Catch On Fire In Florida After Hurricane
BY TYLER DURDEN
FRIDAY, OCT 07, 2022 – 11:07 PM“There’s a ton of EVs disabled from Ian. As those batteries corrode, fires start,” according to Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s top financial officer and fire marshal.
Patronis tweeted Thursday that after Hurricane Ian made landfall last week and flooded regions of his state, a bunch of electric vehicles (EVs) were caught in floods, batteries were waterlogged, and some spontaneously caught on fire.
He said, “that’s a new challenge that our firefighters haven’t faced before. At least on this kind of scale.”
“It takes special training and understanding of EVs to ensure these fires are put out quickly and safely,” he continued in another tweet. “Thanks to [North Collier Fire Rescue] for their hard work.”
…
Read more: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/waterlogged-electric-vehicles-spontaneously-catch-fire-florida-after-hurricane
The following tweet is from the Zero Hedge article;
The problem is electric vehicle batteries contain dangerously reactive chemicals When shorted by floodwater the large electric current causes batteries rapidly corrode and disintegrate, a process which can occur in a matter of minutes.
The fires which occur when the floodwaters subside from the corroded batteries are difficult to extinguish, and can burn hot enough to melt steel and concrete.
If that wasn’t enough, smoke from electric battery fires is toxic. Lithium contamination and poisoning can cause serious short and long term health problems, including coma, seizures, confusion, rapid heart rate and nausea. Lithium exposure can also cause long term dementia like brain injuries.
To their credit, Florida fire officers and leadership seem to have the problem under control. But what about the future? If more people purchase electric vehicles, this problem, which is unique to electric vehicles, could become a major burden for fire responders attempting to deal with the aftermath of future natural disasters.
and we all thought for years that Auto fires were really terrible!
Interesting situation for people who use country back roads and cross causeways that can become flooded even when passable for vehicles.
Or even on a farm road or paddock surface when very wet.
if only someone had known salt water conducts
sadly, that pristine white tesla has not had a main battery lithium ion thermal runaway fire. no way.
its probably had a tyical short and wirign loom fire in the 12v syste same as any car might have.
and i havent seen a single photo that convinces me any ev has had a main battery thermal runaway fire due to hurricane ian.
still bloody stupid, and what will the world do when a tower block goes up due to ev in the basement?
Doesnt really matter how the fire starts, once that lithium main battery gets involved, it becomes an insurmountable problem.
So the fire chief was lying?
BTW, how do you tell from a photograph whether the fire started in the battery pack, or merely spread to the battery pack?
Lets face it: they only have less environmental impact than gasoline vehicles after 100000 miles, which is often not reached due to leasing contracts. This means that de facto these vehicles are a safety and environmental hazard. One should stop this before it’s too late.
Funny old stuff Lithium innit.
In large doses makes you go crazy but in total zero dosage, you also go crazy.
(Try to aim for ‘tween 1 and 2mg daily)
It was found in some (a very few) health spas from Ye Dayes of Olde when folks went to such places to take the water
Mostly they went for the Magnesium Sulphate – a nice double whammy of goodness there.
Obviously the Mg helps with heart health and mental stability, but and especially for autistic children with the eating (supposed) disorder name of pica
They have a particular affection for eating things that most kids hate – Cruciferous Vegetables – notable for their high Sulphur content = Sulphorophane strictly
Calling the Data Miners – has the incidence of autism increased since power station smoke stacks started being scrubbed?
These batteries carry all the oxidizers they require to burn. Once there is a short, the battery, and it may be only 1 cell initially, overheats which leads to a conflagration, which leads to more overheating, which spreads to other cells, a “run-away” effect that cannot be, or is difficult to be, extinguished.
A friend of mine has just bought an AU$72,500 Tesla S, and that is before extras and on-road costs. I think in NSW, here in Australia, road user taxes are being considered.
I think I will stick to my 46 year old Australian made Triumph 2500 TC.
A firefighter said it can take up to 6 hours to fully extinguish a single EV fire and clean up the scene.
Unfortunately though, it is known that EV fires can reignite hours, days, and even weeks after the initial event. Recovery firms are increasingly concerned about dealing with EVs according to the UK Bedfordshire Fire Service.
https://www.bedsfire.gov.uk/Community-safety/Road-safety/Fires-in-Electric-Vehicles.aspx
Nah – It’s all wrong. It’s not the battery, its climate change caused that fire, like bush fires. See, climate change caused the hurricane, hurricane dumps a lot of rain, cars get flooded or washed around by storm surge, EV battery has a bath, then boom a fire. Another reason to act now on climate before these fires get worse…:) — Sarc Alert…
Does anyone know how many EVs caught fire following Ian? I’ve seen this same story about 3 or 4 times now, and each time the story shows the same picture and the same narrative. Not that I have any doubt that it is a serious issue, but it would be good to quantify if possible. My bet is that the entire EV market will either collapse or simply fade into irrelevancy for a variety of reasons.
At least 4 were reported as happening “while ian raged” (out of an unknown number that was flooded). The number of Ice vehicles that spontaneously caught fire following Ian was ZERO POINT ZERO. (and keep in mind that there are magnitudes more ICE than EVs on the roads, and thus most likely magnitudes more flooded ICE than flooded EVs)
The big issue is the corrosion. Even if they aren’t catching fire in great droves immediately after being flooded by Ian, the corrosion is going to eat away and likely cause more of them to burst into flames, weeks, months, and possibly even years down the line.
No problem. Require manufacturers to make the EVs more waterproof and the batteries of materials less susceptible to corrosion. Add another ton and $30,000 to the purchase price. After all, there’s nothing that “the smart people” can’t fix via mandates.
This is a feature, not a fault. Electric vehicles are purposely designed to provide unending heat to keep people warm once utilities fail in bad weather. They can also be recycled once the fire is out into progressive sculptural pieces, though reignition will, on occasion, turn them back into fiery heat engines. And finally there is no need to worry about cognitive injury from lithium fumes – anyone who bought a Tesla was already well on the path to Biden-like mumbling and hair sniffing.
It alarms me that many countries have set a net-zero target for 2050 which is 28 years away. Absurdly short for such a major transition from one energy carrier (liquids) to another (electricity). Not feasible.
Peak oil was in 2018. From now on, the surplus energy available to build up a new infrastructure system, such as 1.5 billion battery-powered cars, is less abundant and more constrained than in the 20th.C.
The problems were obvious 50 years ago, though. It’s just that nothing was done after the early 80s. If anything people now are more prone to believe nonsense such as ‘the American way of life is non-negotiable’. Not if world oil production is declining by 3-5% per year, it’s not.
The interview of Prof. Simon Michaux by Nate Hagens is worth watching, also Michaux gave a talk in Aug 2022 on the challenges of finding enough rare metals for this future to come about. ‘Challenges’ is a euphemism. The chance of it ever coming about seems vanishingly small.
The article talks about lithium bein
g poison. The one thing they don’t talk about is that if you put any water on lithium it bursts into a flame so hot that it will break down water into hydrogen and oxygen causing a huge explosion. Firefighters putting water on a lithium fire only makes things worse. Much worse. Lithium fires require a very special chemical fire extinguisher.