Big Rig starts Fire in Sierra Nevada

[Ulu]

Well it was inevitable. A Tesla electric big rig ran off the freeway, into the Sierra Nevada national forest, and is attempting to set the forest on fire.

Fire crews have been pouring water on to the trees to save them since 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, but the batteries themselves will have to burn out because there’s no way to extinguish a lithium fire.

Of course the fumes are voluminous and toxic, so fire fighters are forced to wear breathing apparatus. They are managing to save the trees from fire but nobody knows about the potential toxic effects of the offgassing on trees.

 

Meanwhile hundreds of truckers and tourists are stuck until I-80 reopens.

 

Edit: news reports did mot mention the driver. I fear he did not survive impact with 90’ tall trees.

 

So was this a steer-by-wire issue? I don’t know much about the Tesla Truck, but the Cybertruck is by wire and people say it steers great.

Edited August 20 by Ulu

[Eneto-55]

Back in around 1980 the plating shop where I was working at the time burned down. The fire resulted in lots of chemicals that should never be mixed flowing around on the floor, together.  My sister-in-law's brother was the fire chief of the crew that was sent out to control the fire, and while he DID wear protective respiratory gear, not everyone on the crew put theirs on. Several years later they started dying of cancer, one after the other.

 

I don't know if anyone really knows the dangers these new technologies present, from the manufacturing stages on through accidents, and the final disposal or recycling process.  Too much is only discovered years later.

 

One of the older missionaries we got to know in Brazil had been in the military during the early testing of the bombs they used in Japan.  He was in a group who was directed to rush in after a test explosion, and take reading of various types. He died of cancer, and many considered it a result of repeated exposure on the test sites there in the South West.

Edited August 20 by Eneto-55

[Los_Control]

These EV battery fires are so intense it is incredible. .... Impossible to even get close enough to try to put them out. Then the reasons why they start burning is somewhat of a mystery.

There was a bus that was put in the shop for maintenance and had not been touched for 3 days ... then it started smoking and FD was called out.

It had stopped smoking and was considered safe, but they did move it outside. Then a few hours later it was fully on fire and burnt for hours.

Most but not all the batteries were destroyed. .... A few days later it caught fire again and the rest of the batteries were destroyed.

 

Sometimes it happens while being charged, have a car in the garage charging overnight, catches fire and burns the house down.

One bus caught fire while charging and burnt several others because they were parked so close together.

 

We will certainly need to develop a way to fight these fires if the EV are going to stick around.

 

[Plymouthy Adams]

I saw two of the Tesla rigs last weekend along I-75 but could not get any indication of driver or AI....windows were totally black looking from my angle of view.  The Tesla rig I think is enough for me to repeal the 'ugliest truck in the world' from Powell to Tesla but for the life of me, I cannot call that Tesla thing a real truck.....

[Plymouthy Adams]

as for battery fires.....just say thanks when it come time to pay your upcharged motorist insurance.....when you are off the grid and sweating in the heat, again say thanks for the battery chargers you off setting if not by direct funds, by direct inconvenience.   Sometime I think we are not advancing at all....just getting a bit too big for our britches. 

[Los_Control]

Well it is a cool technology, can not say it is new though.

 

Seems first electric cars were invented in 1880's .... they never were very practical though and never gained popularity.

 

With modern batteries it is gaining popularity .... it's totally crazy though.

[Eneto-55]

I was specifically referring to the lithium technology as being (at least relatively) new.  I don't remember now what they had hooked up to it at that point, but my great uncle & aunt had a whole bank of "jar batteries" on their back porch.  I think they were originally used to power a radio or maybe even lights in the house, but my best guess is that at the time I saw them they were only powering the electric fence. They were about the size of those 5 gallon water jugs that were commonly used for 'water fountains'.  (Still see them in some doctor's offices, etc.)  In our shack in the village we briefly used some old WW II submarine batteries that had previously been used in the private telephone system on the missionary center back near town. They were huge plastic 'boxes', each 6 volts.  They worked fine as a battery backup system out on the mission center, because we had a 6 cylinder Mercedes diesel on a generator for when the line power was off, which happened a lot. (Shut down at night, regardless.) They just couldn't hold up just being charged by two small (by today's standards) solar panels.

 

But the dangers of battery acid was much better understood, even back in the 1800's, than that of the lithium battery technology.  (At least in my perception, although events like this one are surely widening awareness of the dangers involved.)

[Los_Control]

@Eneto-55 please do not misunderstand me, I only suggest the electric car has been around forever .... Lithium is new.

 

 

 

[ggdad1951]

That is the problem with the Li batteries...no way to really extinguish.  I'm sure with time they will be "safer" like our cell phones, but I can't imagine what would happen in a condo complex where the first few floors (maybe underground) are filled with EV's and one cooks off...my buddy lived downtown MPLS in such a place, walking thru his garage one day made me think of this as I saw all the tesla's lined up.

[Ulu]

Holy miracle! The driver walked away from the crash.

 

That truck was 95% gone.

 

As was the tree he hit.

 

Tesla sent a cleanup team.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 21 by Ulu

[Sniper]

On 8/20/2024 at 1:39 PM, Los_Control said:

We will certainly need to develop a way to fight these fires if the EV are going to stick around.

 

Back in my sailor days we were taught how to deal with a metals fire.  Kick it over the side.

 

There really is no way to put out a metals fire, lithium or magnesium.  It will burn till there is nothing left to burn and if we didn;t kick the chopper over the side, if it caught fire, it's burn a hole through the bottom of the ship.

 

 

[Ulu]

Imagine a machine of aluminum and magnesium alloy, carbon and glass-filled plastics, full of lithium batteries, and it takes a hit.

 

You’d be jumping from a flyable aircraft because of the toxic smoke.

 

It would sink to the sea floor, still burning.

 

WW2 Volkswagen military cars had magnesium engine blocks. Those things burned like a flare gun once they got lit.

 

I don’t think that changed to aluminum until the late 1950s.

[ggdad1951]

12 hours ago, Sniper said:

 

Back in my sailor days we were taught how to deal with a metals fire.  Kick it over the side.

 

There really is no way to put out a metals fire, lithium or magnesium.  It will burn till there is nothing left to burn and if we didn;t kick the chopper over the side, if it caught fire, it's burn a hole through the bottom of the ship.

 

 

 Ever see the video of the tesla that was burning under the ocean after they pushed it in?  These chemical reactions just don't stop.

[Ulu]

Yep. A Tesla will burn in outer space.

[Dan Hiebert]

Air cooled VW engine blocks have always contained some percentage of magnesium.  Whether new aftermarket blocks still do or not, I don't know.  Yeah, metal fires not good.  In high school, (Presidio, TX), for the homecoming bonfire one year, we put a VW engine block at the top of a pole in the middle of the pyre.  At some point that thing finally caught fire, and it lit up the whole valley.  It was like a white flare at the top of the pyre, and we weren't quite expecting it.  The block didn't burn all that long, but it couldn't be extinguished.  The town only had a rag-tag VFD at the time, with nothing to even try to extinguish that kind of fire.  So that bright (sorry) idea didn't carry over.  The M113 armored personnel carriers we had when I was in the Army were made of an aluminum magnesium alloy, with a high magnesium content to make it harder.  We were trained to abandon them if hit with a HEAT round...assuming we survived that...because there was no saving it once it caught fire.  They had/have an internal fire suppression system that is only intended to give the crew time to get out, not save the vehicle.