Luton airport has been closed after a huge fire ripped through a multi-storey car park, causing it to collapse and forcing all flights to be suspended.
In an update on Wednesday morning, the airport advised people not to travel to the airport and said all flights would be suspended until 3pm. Passengers were also advised to contact their airline for information about flights.
Footage posted on social media showed flames and billowing smoke coming from the top floor of the multi-storey car park, along with the sounds of loud explosions and car alarms.
Bedfordshire fire and rescue service said the structure had suffered a “significant structural collapse” and one half of the car park had been “fully involved in the fire”.
Petrol and diesel can burn, obviously. But I can’t recall any such fires that took out the entire car park and the building itself. Has there been any recent change in car technology that makes such fires either more likely, or more dangerous when they do occur?
Suspicious fire at Luton, you say?
How’s Gaza doing, innit?
My first thoughts as well – spontaneous fire in a car park looks suspiciously like spontaneous fires in ships and bus garages.
If our culturally enriched cousins had been involved I would expect them to have found a more relevant target such as the local synagogue.
Government-backed mobile incendiary bombs aka EVs.
Last week it was 21 Italians in a coach.
This week, not paradise, nah, Luton Airport.
What will it take: Chunnel train? Packed channel ferry? Shopping mall carpark?
How many incinerated voters is too many?
We could have a sweepstake. But it’s gonna happen.
Unless someone invents a whole new kind of battery that doesn’t go off like a flare. And EV’s wait until then….But then, the people buying EV’s are Greens and Lib-Dems, so there is an upside of sorts.
How many incinerated voters is too many?
Don’t worry, we’re going to come down like a ton of bricks on Islamophobia.
A vehicle fire in a modern car park. Why was the fire suppression not able to contain this until the brigade could deal with it?
Has something changed to invalidate the design assumptions?
It will be interesting to see the results of the investigation, and to what extent they are swept aside.
Probably RAAC. Or that high alumina stuff. Or the cladding.
Unless someone invents a whole new kind of battery that doesn’t go off like a flare.
Can’t see it happening. Batteries store energy, chemically. If you get a fault, it will come out. Look at your humble, ancient tech, lead/acid sitting there solid & indestructable. Drop a piece of metal across those terminals & you’ll have a 20,000 degree plasma arc. But at least the only thing flammable about L/A’s is the plastic encasement.
The advantage of liquid hydrocarbon transport fuels is they’re not readily flammable. It’s the vapour that’s flammable. So you need particular conditions to get ignition. And when you do, they’re self limiting. They need an oxygen supply , so they only burn at the fuel/air interface. It’s worth considering that the energy density of a gallon of petrol is equivalent to around 12 kilos of TNT. The energy within a fully fuelled car – if it all came out at once – would be equivalent to a 250 lb general purpose aircraft bomb. But it can’t. The chemistry won’t let it.
Or Lorraine Chase.
It’s likely the first fire responders already know the cause but will be prevented from saying so publicly…
Lots of El Al flights at Luton. It’s convenient for Golders Green.
I wouldn’t rule out some freelance peace activities at all.
Wasn’t there something similar in Liverpool a while ago? (2018). It apparently started in a Land Rover (according to the BBC).
I never understood why anyone who values their wheels would park in Liverpool.
Tim the Coder,
I cross the channel fairly regularly and electric cars are few and far between. They simply don’t have the range to be useful for long journeys, and using foreign chargers is painful.
That’s not to say this won’t become a real problem in the future. So which is safer – a ferry full of electric cars, or the train? Eurotunnel has spent a lot of money on fire safety, whereas ferry companies seem to operate on a shoestring budget. On the other hand, ferries have lifeboats.
Laugh? I nearly paid for my round!
We use the tunnel a lot and fires cross my mind each time. The protocols look good and each carriage looks like it can be sealed quite quickly in the even of a fire. There’s regular access to the service tunnel and at a worst the train is no more than 25 minutes from getting to its destination (assuming it can’t stop and head back) and having been on one that was delayed and then speeded up I wouldn’t be surprised if they can get there a damned sight quicker.
I’ve also done the safety at sea course which involves trying to get in to life rafts from the water. I’m reasonably fit and struggled and don’t see the average person having any chance. It will be absolute chaos and they aren’t getting to port quickly, in fact you don’t want a burning ship anywhere near a port.
On balance I’d rather be on a channel tunnel than a ferry if their is an EV incident, although I’d prefer they were banned or at least put in special zones where they can be very closely monitored.
Andrew Hopkinson, chief fire officer for Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, said there were no early indications to suggest the fire was suspicious.
“It was not an EV. This was a diesel powered vehicle.”
@BnW
Thank heavens the carpark’s fire suppression features were working… Oh, wait, there weren’t any.
@BNW the fire may have escalated more than would be expected. From the BBC:
Liam Smith, crew commander at Leighton Buzzard fire station, said that when he arrived, the fire was mainly on the third floor. But it quickly spread down to the lower floors when the third floor started to collapse.
He said there were “lots of electric vehicles potentially involved quite early on”, though the fire started in a diesel car.
The blaze began in the airport’s newest car park, the closest to departures, part of a £160m redevelopment of the main terminal and surrounding buildings that only opened in December 2018.
It’s a surreal experience, going to Luton airport. You keep expecting to see goats and chickens milling about on the runway.
Soon, no doubt.
“It was not an EV. This was a diesel powered vehicle.”
If you’ve ever tried it, diesel’s not easy to get burning. Chuck a match in a bucket of diesel, the match goes out. So it would have been a fire of some other substances before the diesel ignited. Does make you wonder. Airport carpark’s unlikely to have any large commercials. Car fires usually take a fair amount of time to get started. And tend to be immediately noticeable. Burning plastics. Lot of smoke & stink.
I imagine it’s quite hard to get an EV identified as a cause of fire, these days. There’s too many vested interests would prefer otherwise. I’d suspect when one does burn, there’s a great deal of interest in examining the petrol or diesel parked next to it.
The BBC on its website has made it very clear, several times, that the fire started with a diesel car… So you can bet your bottom dollar that when the true, full details come out it will have started with an electric car. Parked ICE cars just don’t spontaneously combust, at least without “external assistance” anyway. (IMHO of course).
It was a diesel fire. From a generator. Being towed by an EV car
The BBC on its website has made it very clear, several times, that the fire started with a diesel car
And now the chosen ones have been licensed to pounce on anyone who refers to at as an EV fire as conspiracy theorists, bigots, climate change deniers etc, no matter how well informed they are., making getting to the truth even harder.
See also Covid vaccines stop transmission, Covid vaccines stop you getting it etc
Parked ICE cars just don’t spontaneously combust, at least without “external assistance” anyway. (IMHO of course).
And a great deal of experimental evidence.
There’s considerable interest in torching vehicles for the insurance claims. A lot of people try it. Few succeed. It is actually very hard to get a car burning well without any obvious evidence of intent.
Parked ICE cars just don’t spontaneously combust, at least without “external assistance
Vauxhalls used to be bad for it. But this was 30 years sgo. Terrible electrics.
Perhaps in the spirit of communal rapprochement EV charging points should be prioritised near mosques?
I’m surprised they haven’t said the car had mental health issues and the spontaneous explosion was nothing to do with its identity.
“. Chuck a match in a bucket of diesel, the match goes out.” They used to tell us that about avtur, which is pretty much like diesel. A squaddy on my old squadron attempted to demonstrate this fact with the result of a helicopter on fire and the squaddy in the glasshouse.
BiS, modern diesels, at least some of them, are frigteningly easy to set alight.
We had a bit of an episode with my old work at the workshop with a disgruntled pyromaniac.
Cost us three caddies before the plod managed to nab the idiot f*cker.
Those diesel caddies, when enticed just right, are beyond any means of handheld fire suppression within two minutes. A raging fireball in 5. We checked the timestamps on the security cameras.
All that plastic inside is very much not fire-retarant, it seems…
And once you get that diesel nice and warm… weeellll….
And all it took for the f*cker to set a car alight is pop his little trick up on one of the tires and light it. All of maybe 15-20 seconds from approach to leaving. Doesn’t leave much or any trace after either.
That said….
They built a large car park without a sprinkler system?!!!!
And it passed fire/safety inspection??!!!
What. The. Actual. Fuck?!!
Diesel explodes, never mind just burns – it just requires a higher flash point than petrol.
A mate of mine won the Miltary Cross in Afghanistan for going forward under heavy fire to recover a vehicle transporter which was leaking fuel.
The reason for the award was precisely because he put himself at severe risk of immolation.
That was when he naiively believed in the mission, and the country.
He said there were “lots of electric vehicles potentially involved quite early on”, though the fire started in a diesel car.
So there you may very well have it. Fires need fuel, oxidant and ignition. Ignition will happen from time to time by lightning strike, electrical faults, arson or whatever.
So you design and operate with (i) the intention of suppressing ignition insofar as you can, but (ii) in the sure knowledge that ignition will eventually come along, so that you must manage the fuel or the oxidant. Alas, lithium ion batteries contain both fuel and oxidant.
So a garage full of EVs may be ignited by a faulty diesel car just as dried woodland or grassland can be ignited by a discarded fag end.
Management of the parking of EVs might be called for e.g. making them park individually, at ground level, within protective earthen walls fifty feet apart. Or a hundred feet, who knows?
No fire suppression. FFS.
Presumably LTN will shortly be having a rather disappointing conversation with their insurers
My money is on a diesel hybrid, with the hybrid bit causing the initial issue.
Modern cars are big and seemingly getting bigger. Airport carparks cram vehicles in together making for very little space between them. That car park was at about 75% capacity, so lots and lots of cars very tightly packed. An electrical fault can turn a diesel car into a fireball in minutes . From there its just a matter of how easy it is to ignite the ones on either side.
I don’t know if a fire in a diesel car will spread faster of slower to an electric one parked 18 inches from it. As most of the underside of an EV is often the battery I would guess they will catch more rapidly than a similar sized petrol or diesel car.
There was a big fire in a multi storey car park in Liverpool 2017 so this is not unheard of.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-46290095
I’ve seen a diesel car which was filled with petrol explode – the fire spread very quickly, just after the engine was started. The driver got out with few seconds to spare.
Many possibilities, but the EV/hybrid scenario is most likely.
https://www.nu.nl/303397/video/autos-exploderen-op-parkeerdek-bij-britse-luchthaven.html
The middle of the clip seems to show the initial fire.
Looks like the car caught fire while driving to me. Rear lights are on at least..
An electrical fault can turn a diesel car into a fireball in minutes .
How? In the engine bay there’s about a cup full of diesel. The residuals in the injector system. The diesel tank’s the other end of the car. Unless the car has the ignition on, little of the electrics at the rear of a car are live. What is live is low amperage. A dead short wouldn’t cause much more than a puff of smoke & a nasty smell unless it ignited the boot carpet or interior plastic. In which case it’d take some time before you got a blaze sufficient to damage the tank. Diesel isn’t very flammable. You can put out fires with it.
Odd one for sure. Unless was carrying something inadvisable inside….
The picture of the sole car on fire from the middle of the vid Grikath linked above does remind me – didn’t some twat try (and fail) to do something explosive with a car in Glasgow airport some years ago? And the results of that failure looked a lot like that car on fire?
Otoh perhaps some numpty was carting welding gear or similar around in a rather careless fashion
We use the tunnel a lot and fires cross my mind each time. The protocols look good and each carriage looks like it can be sealed quite quickly in the even of a fire. There’s regular access to the service tunnel and at a worst the train is no more than 25 minutes from getting to its destination (assuming it can’t stop and head back) and having been on one that was delayed and then speeded up I wouldn’t be surprised if they can get there a damned sight quicker.
There have been several fires in the Chunnel, all arising in HGVs. The safety systems have worked very well. Trains running through have to be able to be split in the middle*, so that if a major fire starts in one half, the other half can be separated and driven away (passengers having been transferred, I assume).
* one reason German ICEs can’t travel through to St Pancras, although a test run without passengers has taken place.
A terrorist action by hard right, climate change denier, conspiracy theorist, Incel, misogynists who were conducting a false flag operation to blame perfectly innocent EVs.
@BiS
Unless the car has the ignition on, little of the electrics at the rear of a car are live
Statistically electrical faults are the second most common cause of car fires with only fuel spills causing more.
In this instance the car lights were on. Granted this doesn’t mean that the ignition was on but it does suggest that the car probably hadn’t been safely parked for an extended period.
Video of the first car on fire. The fire is coming from under the car which points towards a EV battery fire.
https://twitter.com/joerichlaw/status/1712075303428751832
Clearly, this shows that diesel cars must be banned.
“No fire suppression. FFS.”
If the fire did spread quickly to EVs then fire suppressors wouldn’t achieve much, would they? (I assume you mean sprinklers but would welcome correction.)
On a deeper point: is there any reason on earth to give any credence to reports beyond the fact that the fire happened and did a lot of damage?
Why would you want sprinklers in a car park? Surely they would just move burning petrol or diesel around.
@CJ Nerd,
If there’s an awful lot of petrol or diesel…. possibly. maybe if you got a burst tanker. Not really from a car.
Most people misunderstand the point of a sprinkler system anyway.
It’s not there to put out fires.
It’s there to make everything around the fire far less flammable, containing it.
Water takes an impressive amount of energy to heat up. Even more to evaporate.
So the “soggy rain” put out by the sprinklers soaks up a lot of the radiant heat from a fire, and most of the heat from the hot gases coming off it, while ensuring any surface that’s wet doesn’t get over 100 degrees centigrade. At which temperature most stuff simply doesn’t ignite.
Might warp or melt, but it won’t burn.
That lovely fire triangle people should be familiar with.
A sprinkler system might put out a small fire, provided it’s actually right under a sprinkler head, but that rarely happens, really.
When it comes to fuels like diesel, gasoline, and other flammables, it may run off with the water, possibly even burning. But unless there’s sufficient heat already, both the dilution/spreading out by the water and the cooling by the water, it simply won’t maintain combustion temperature, possibly even evaporation temperatures once the really volatile components have gone.
Still a fire hazard, but not a fire.
Afaik the only flammable liquid fuel that doesn’t play nice with this is light naphta, aka lighter fluid, which is so volatile and flammable we use it for lighters…
But you tend not to see large amounts of that in cars, or anywhere else, really.
When it comes to EV batteries with their Lithium, things are another matter.. That stuff burns so hot it dissociates water, or CO2 for that matter..
But even then a sprinkler system should work, because while it may accelerate the primary fire, it should slow down progression to the next vehicles simply because of the cooling effect.
Add the right kinds of salts, and it might actually limit the rate at which the battery burns, keeping things even more under control.
Of course… That stuff does a number on paintjobs, and any salt spray will do a number on any exposed electronics..
So the fire may be contained, but still cause a Lot of Damage..
Honestly… with Lithium you just can’t win when it runs away from you.
Most people misunderstand the point of a sprinkler system anyway.
It’s not there to put out fires.
It’s there to make everything around the fire far less flammable, containing it.
Well yes and the main reason for containing it is to allow people to escape and the fire brigade to arrive in time to help those that haven’t or can’t. Once there’s a blaze going and nobody at risk the fire brigade will try to contain it to protect spread and loss of life.
Grikath writes (at October 12, 2023 at 12:35am): “Add the right kinds of salts, and it might actually limit the rate at which the battery burns, keeping things even more under control.”
I am no expert on fire from EVs, or any other sort of file. However I would have thought that adding some sort of salt to water would make it into a more effective electrolyte. Thus pouring it over battery terminals would increase the electric current (compared to water alone or to a less strong electrolyte). This would surely increase the electric current and thus increase the rate at which energy is released from the battery – possibly with arcing too.
Would Grikath (or someone else informed) please come back on this.
Best regards
Nigel. I don’t know much about lithium either. However a quick google gives the following: ‘Lithium reacts intensely with water, forming lithium hydroxide and highly flammable hydrogen. The colourless solution is highly alkalic. The exothermal reactions lasts longer than the reaction of sodium and water, which is directly below lithium in the periodic chart.’
So it appears that it’s not the conduction of current that causes the violence, but the chemical reaction with water. Thus I doubt that salt would affect this much.
Boganboy, that’s talking about metallic lithium. That would be like saying water’s explosive because it contains hydrogen – it isn’t because the hydrogen’s part of a compound (it’s H20 after all) so behaves differently. Similarly lithium in batteries is part of a compound, not a pure element. Most car makers use NMC batteries where it’s LiCoO2, LiMnO2, and LiNiO2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_nickel_manganese_cobalt_oxides
Thanks Anon.
@Anon: yes, I’m no expert but I understand that the lithium in a lithium-ion battery isn’t the fire hazard. It’s the organic electrolyte that’s the fuel, and oxygen stripped from the electrodes that’s the oxidant. Because the battery provides its own oxidant you can’t extinguish the fire with the usual foam.
Here’s a comment seen recently:
“teaef PERMALINK
October 11, 2023 11:06 am
My parked A3 diesel recently caught fire and went up like a torch. Luckily parked outside without other cars near. Electrics in the dash somewhere caused it.”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/10/11/fire-rips-through-car-park-at-luton-airport/#comments
A nice scientific look at what happens during a battery fire and at what temperatures you’re looking at is : here .
Note that the temperatures reached on the outside are in open air, and not insulated in a battery pack.
When it comes to “the electrolyte is the main problem” I need to point out that the electrolyte is itself based on Lithium. And Fluor.. It’s actually the lithium there that is part of the problem. Initially and later on.
Initially, particularly when the electrolyte gets to 70 degrees centigrade and above, it breaks up in HF and LiF. Rapidly.
Particularly the formation of LiF is highly exothermic. It’s the runner-up when it comes to Bang for your Buck, only outstripped by the formation of BeO in terms of energy released.
At this point your battery is a Goner.
Between the heat created by LiF formation, applied to a rapidly growing concentration of HF, the semipermeable membrane fails and causes internal shorts in the battery, causing the internal temperature to rise even further, because the cathode starts shedding its stored very hot Litium ions into the mix.
Even if the battery casing does not breach at this point, you get a hellish mixture of molten battery insides, where highly energetic Li+ and F- ions are stripping anything suitable according to the Laws of Physics until the whole mess reaches a pressure/temperature range where a new equilibrium is reached.
Which has never been tried afaik, but the theoretical values indicate it’s at several magnitudes of Impressive.
And for which we have nothing we can actually build to contain it. Possibly a couple of exotic ceramics for the heat (well above 2k Celcius..), but those are quite vulnerable to HF, especially when it’s hot.
So of course the battery container breaches, and the whole mess gets exposed to atmospheric oxygen, which at least gives rise to some normal reactions, with the metals oxydising, and the carbon burning off.
Still with a lot of heat, though, with core temperatures well above 1k Celsius, with the escaping gases being in the same temperature range, if not higher.
So now comes the Fun Bit of adding water.
People don’t know/realise that water is not actually stable: It dissociates in a thermal equilibrium. At any temperature above absolute zero.
Outside of this being one of the Secrets to Life, the important bit here is that that equilibrium is a curve that shifts with temperature. With the 50/50 balance point at about 2k Celsius at atmospheric pressure.
(and there’s enough thermite-on-ice videos to show what that looks like..)
Even if the battery doesn’t burn so hot that you reach this 50/50 point, the equilibrium will be radically shifted, and anything between 10% and 25% of the water will dissociate into a lovely mix of highly reactive components.
So at the temperatures the battery burns, tossing water on it will make sure that anything metallic will basically be fed a dense concentration of ( hot!) oxygen (radicals) and hydroxide ions, much more than atmospheric convection could ever accomplish.
And the end result of that is that all the excess H2 will get expelled at respectable temperatures into the atmosphere. Causing a hydrogen fire right above the burning battery on top of everything else.
When it comes to adding salts into the mix..
Yes, there are salts that react happily with Lithium and other components under the conditions in that fire.
Those reactions are highly endothermic so they take away a lot of energy from the fire, cooling it down.
The problem with that is that those reactions are also in an equilibrium, and that the energy absorbed will get released as the temperature drops.
So they will not stop he fire itself, but rather allow a more controlled release of energy, avoiding most of the extreme characteristics of the fire.
Oh, and they’re toxic, and the reaction products rather agressive, if the salts themselves aren’t to begin with.
So YMMV there whether or not to use them.
And yes, there’s many more complex things happening. This is just the TLDR highlights avoiding any serious chemistry and equations. This is RedOx reactions on steroïds, sniffing coke all the way.
The most important thing to take away from this is to toss your device/battery outside if it ever gets more than Uncomfortably Warm, and never, ever use the battery again.
And if you drive an EV and ever get a battery temperature warning.. ditch/park the car, preferably safely, asap and GTFO.
Probably no need to say here, but don’t try this at home..
Instead, use a safe distance, an explosion screen, proper protective gear, cheap (web)cameras, and a place where the Busybodies/Pearlclutchers don’t get wind of what you’re doing.. 0:)
Oh….. And don’t even try dry ice and liquid nitrogen.
It either won’t touch the Fire, or when forced gives… Unexpected Results, usually enhancing RUD chances.
This, anecdotal as it is, has been tried by me and Younglings with … Curiousity…. and an excess of “Let’s find the Limits of our Equipment”. And a definite lack of sense of self-preservation.
Aspiring Professional Camera-operators with rather impressive kit from that “event life” I have.
The explosion screen warning is no joke. Things could have gone…. Otherwise … Especially when your calculated time to evacuation proves to be …rather less than that…
And cumulative effects prove to be … More Than Expected.
And no… It’s not on YouTube… That sort of pre-empts Pleading the Fifth when it comes to Euro sensitivities.. 😛
Compliments on your dissertation, Grikath.
I must say I have a distinct aversion to HF. Working with precious metals, I tended to regard cyanide with contempt. But HF certainly retained my attention. It’s used for stripping enamels off of jewellery because it will dissolve glass. One treats it with great caution. That stuff gets into your bloodstream, the only remedy is amputation of the part effected.
As for TLDR – I’d imagine for our Oxbridge educated politicians that’s shorter than this sentence.
The amputation would have to be swift. The F ends up replacing the Ca (I think!) which the heart uses and so death by heart attack within 20 minutes of even being splashed by HF. “Can you survive hydrofluoric acid?
Exposures of 6%-8% BSA burns of concentrations above 50% HF almost always prove fatal within hours. At lower concentrations, death can still occur if definitive treatment is not sought quickly.” Vile stuff.
Given all this who on earth signed these things off as safe for use in road transport?
I know! The people who signed off on the Covid vaxx, that’ll be it.
Isn’t government wonderful?
@Our Host,
Almost.. F- ruins your Fe+ in your haem assembly.
In short, it permanently disables any oxygen-carrying capacity of your blood.
Worst part is… It can be “recycled”, so it propagates.
Even worse, in our body it shifts the equilibrium from any reaction requiring H+ ( which is pretty much all of them) and even interferes in the places where you’re talking about H- ( yes… this exists in biochemistry,…. briefly, but verrah, verrah important…)
You don’t want F anywhere near anything that’s important to Life. There’s a reason you find enamel on the Outside…
There’s a solid reason Life settled for Cl for practical purposes.
ugh… I farked up a tag somewhere… 🙁
As for the Ca replacement… That would be Sr.
Chemically 99.99% equivalent, but with 1.5 times the cross-section, so it’ll bugger up some active enzymatic processes. No problems with bone building, Hell on muscle action.
And that’s, of course, for the natural stable isotope.
For the Cousin with the Bad Name, all the other disadvantages apply….
So essentially a burning lithium battery “electrolyses” any water you use to put the fire out and turns it into fuel for a second fire. This sounds like something from hell.
We really haven’t thought through the implications of this, have we.
I guess why they now ask if your bags have electronics in at the airport. As if everyone answers honestly. This is going to go wrong, badly, eventually.
@Bi4R
My nephew is a keen amateur cyclist, with a full ‘professional’ standard racing bike, including an electric gearshift. eJ refused to carry his bike (you can’t take the battery out without complete disassembly), so he had to borrow one when he got to his destination.