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.
Isn’t oxygen deprivation (usually through burying) a much faster method?
Maybe for smaller things, a regular car maybe.
But by the time a suitable digging machine arrives on scene and digs a big enough hole for a semi it’d probably be faster to flood it with water. Not to mention what might be underneath the ground, so they’d also have to spend time determining if there’s any gas lines or whatever before they dig so they don’t make a much bigger problem
Lithium fires are self-oxidizing, so that won’t work. Burying it helps keep it from spreading, though.
Do you volunteer your backyard for such burials?
Sure.
Sure you would, now. It’s easy to be virtuous when the only things at stake are fake internet points.
I’d love to see you show the same heroism when an excavator in fire department livery comes to your house, rips up your front lawn, damages your water line and underground cables, potentially damages your basement’s walls, and carries off two cubic metres of soil to put out somebody else’s vehicle fire somewhat faster than water would. I’m sure you’d feel great about the damage you’d have to get fixed, even if you ignore the cost. Or do you think that fire departments would just buy dumptrucks to haul soil to fires on the off chance that the reporter correctly identifies the involved vehicle as having a lithium battery?
It’s not ideal, but water with fire retardant is the most practical solution.