Well…

Posted on by August 20, 2024

Now we know how long an EV semi fire will burn and close a road…

EMIGRANT GAP, Calif. —

Eastbound Interstate 80 is reopening nearly 16 hours after a Tesla Semi caught fire east of Nyack early Monday, Cal Fire said.

Drivers were being kept off the interstate for at least half a mile in both directions because the Tesla electric vehicle’s battery was on fire, said Jason Lyman, a California Highway Patrol spokesperson. The toxic fumes are an inhalation danger, he sai

Cal Fire crews and a hazardous materials team contracted by Tesla were on the scene.

Full article, HERE from KCRA.com

We know lithium batteries ‘feed’ on each other when they catch fire, but 16 hours to get down to 1000 degrees… wow… And untold thousands of gallons of water, plus tying up x number of fire engines.

And it happened on I-80, so there were options to get around it, but what if…

This happens in a city or in heavy traffic? Where to people go? Get out and run? If it’s in a city, what happens to the buildings adjacent to the wreck? 2000+ degrees IS going to set off other fires just from the reflected heat.

Or on a bridge, or something like the Hoover Dam? Or in the winter? I-80 gets their share of that every winter. Or in Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc? Or Texas in the summer with fire danger?

And if this is in the EU, where the roads are smaller and packed? Same questions…

I don’t have any good answers folks.

Does anybody???

Comments

Well… — 30 Comments

    • That fire was like the script of a disaster movie; extremely heavy vehicle, extremely hot fire, great clouds of noxious smoke, remote location far from infrastructure, on one of the hottest days, on a major interstate, access blocked by traffic.

      I am surprised no one died from excessive heat or smoke.

  2. I’ve heard our local fire brigade approach to an EV fire is to crane it into a shipping container full of water and let it stew for a couple of days. Difficult if it is in a parking garage. It seems the zippy little scooters can also cause huge problems if they get into thermal runaway. It is after all a metal fire, but worse since the stored energy does not need any outside element to put out a lot of heat. Incendiary bombs. I used to work in the fire protection equipment sales and service industry…I would have advised my clients to forbid those bombs from the premises, because fixing the problem afterward is orders of magnitude worse than prevention, and rebuilding after any fire is very questionable. I wonder what the insurance companies think, keeping in mind EV is a forced solution to a problem that only connected insiders and corrupt governments invented for political ends. One of many.

    • You’re not supposed to park an EV in a parking garage for just this reason – but not only does it happen, some parking garages have chargers in them too

  3. One wonders how much smoke andother toxic material was released during that time as the batteried burned.

  4. Been a while since I’ve driven in & around Boston MA with the Sumner & Callahan tunnels under the harbor plus the “Big Dig” connecting I-93 to the south side of town so I can’t recall whether they ban hazardous cargo (look for the letters “HC” in a red circle and slash) but places like that – or the tunnel under Las Vegas’ airport – would be an “unfortunate” location for an “accident.” Especially if the perp driver can claim not to be able to read English.
    These are Class “D” fires, which means (a) water only makes things more lively, and (b) you get downwind of those metal oxide fumes and “there goes third grade,” or “there goes algebra” as my dad used to say. No way to stop them except special chemicals that directly cut off the oxygen supply. But if your reaction supplies its own oxygen (thermite, for example) then there’s really nothing to do but stand off until the reagents are done partying.

  5. “Does anybody???”

    Go back to fossil fuels – a proven technology we have over a hundred years of experience with and know how to mitigate the dangers, and deal with problems effectively when they happen, and which it’s very hard to beat the energy-density and cost-effectiveness of.

    How about that?

  6. I think it’s time to start talking with our state and nat’l. representatives. Texas, for example, could ban EVs and charging stations from parking garages, tunnels, bridges over a certain length, and ferries. We now have enough incidents to make a case for public safety issues of EVs in any kind of enclosed environment or critical section of roadway. “It’s for the children.”

  7. Waste of water trying to put out a Lithium or Sodium fire.
    It will only make it flare up.

    Class D fire extinguisher or in this case lots and lots of sand to bury the truck.

    My first job out of college was using metal hydrides and we a number of fires because the solvent had trace amounts of water in it.

  8. Several of the major dams with roads across them have had bypass bridges built since 9/11. Examples include the Hoover Dam, bypassed by the Callaghan-Tillman Bridge, and the new US 62 Bridge bypassing the TVA Kentucky Dam. The roads over the dams remain in use for service and tourism, but through traffic is diverted. Still a concern for the bridge, and dams that haven’t been bypassed, of course.

    • We visited Hoover Dam back when the bypass bridge was about half done. At that time it was already closed to truck traffic, and trucks were being forced to make the major detour down to Laughlin and cross the bridge there.

  11. Hang everyone in the national legislatures who passed laws mandating self-driving or EVs.

    Through in state/provincial, extra national legislatrues, and emissions controls, for jollies.

    Problem solved, problem staying solved.

    Of course the reason we haven’t done this already is that it is lawless, and inspires civil disorder, even if it would be entirely just.

  12. All- Thanks and thanks for the knowledge. RHT, I ‘think’ that one is vaporware, especially the 9 minute charge. Simple math doesn’t make that possible…

    • Forgot to add that Yeah, I have some questions too. For one, that short a charge time has GOT to involve some heat issues.

      • And heat adds resistance to power flow, which causes more heat and you’re into thermal runaway which isn’t pretty at all where this much power is concerned.

        If they can come up with a material that can safely store and release that much power, then they’ll have solved a major problem. I wouldn’t be counting on that solution anytime soon, if at all.

        • Maybe two decades back, IBM(?) released a note on some R&D they had in process. Batteries made of carbon nano-tubes. Said it would take about 7 years to get it to market. Claimed a phone battery would charge in seconds, and a car battery in a couple minutes. Since then, crickets…

  13. based on what happened in Atlanta on I-285N I wonder how much damage the fire has done to the road itself? Here it was a month or more before the area of the fire was running traffic.

  16. Am I a bad person for thinking that it would be nice to see something like that happening somewhere in D.C. – preferably in a garage containing all those limos used by our “betters” there?

  18. All we have to do to solve the worst case issues is bar them from parking garages, anywhere within 1000″ of flammables, in tunnels, on bridges, and underneath Interstate overpasses. Problem solved. Parked (before first overpass).

    • In other words, have the Department of Transportation classify EVs as HazMat trucks (with the sole exception in what you outline being that they a allow HazMat trucks to travel under overpasses), or deregulate HazMat cargoes. Since “watermelon environmentalism” has never been within their brief, it’s pretty obvious shere they’re going to come down on…

      And, won’t THAT put a hive of bees in the bonnets of watermelon environmentalists… It makes them choose between either acknowledging that they never thought about the trade-offs between diesel and battery, or dismantling BS regulations they’ve spent decades foisting off on the trucking and the rail industries.

  19. Frankly, we need several more of these EV fires, all on major interstates. Having one on I95 / I495 around DC might actually get the message across. I nominate the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

  20. EV fires seem to happen in snow and salt conditions on roads. If a road had been treated for certain road conditions then it is likely to get into the battery or the power of the EV setting off the fire. This was seen in Florida with the salt water from Hurricanes, also in PA with snow treatment on their toll road.

    It seems that EVs have issues with salt and treatments that affect batteries and power. How and what they affect the EVs are not clear, but it should be up to the EV manufacturer to find out.