Neighbors Tesla catches fire with a garage full of ammo

svivian

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I used to volunteer for a fire department in a very small rural town here in Colorado. One late afternoon a kid lighting matches set his house on fire as well as the neighbors on each side of him.

Problem was the neighbor to the right was an avid shooter and reloader. When we showed up he told us he had approximately 200-250lbs lbs of powder in the basement as well as tens of thousands of rounds of ammo. That sucker sounded like a 4th of july parade and all we could do is stand back and watch and provide coverage to surrounding structures.
 
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Moserkr

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Someone correct me if Im wrong, but water cannot put out a lithium fire since it makes its own oxygen. So what good does a water cannon do, and why dont fire departments have some sort of chemical spray for the lithium fires? Pretty sure they just try to limit what burns around it right now until the lithium burns itself out. “Green” technology… lol
 

JFK

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Last garage fire I went to at work was a Tesla charger that caught on fire. Cooked the Tesla, all contents of the garage and ran the entire attic of the house. Homeowner had scabbed the Tesla charger onto some old knob and tube electrical.
 
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Someone correct me if Im wrong, but water cannot put out a lithium fire since it makes its own oxygen. So what good does a water cannon do, and why dont fire departments have some sort of chemical spray for the lithium fires? Pretty sure they just try to limit what burns around it right now until the lithium burns itself out. “Green” technology… lol
This is correct. You pretty much just have to throw the vehicle in a body of water, or drop tank. You just try to protect the adjacent structures. Tesla supposedly lowered the standards on batteries for lower input costs, but keep charging a higher price for the vehicles. I would rather burn Hydrogen gas to fuel a vehicle.
 

JeffP_Or

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I'm no firefighter and do understand that Tesla is extremely hot as it burns - but one wonders if there is any consideration for yarding that thing out into the street and away from the house? Hopefully, would have been on the top of my list of things to think about.
Bust out the windshield and passenger side window, strap/chain off that a-pillar and get to pulling! Let the car burn in the street and save the house.
 

manitou1

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Someone correct me if Im wrong, but water cannot put out a lithium fire since it makes its own oxygen. So what good does a water cannon do, and why dont fire departments have some sort of chemical spray for the lithium fires? Pretty sure they just try to limit what burns around it right now until the lithium burns itself out. “Green” technology… lol
Fire depts use the water to cool the fire to below ignition/burn temp. It is a fallacy that they use water to "smother" a fire.
And yes, most FDs have foam eductors on their trucks to apply foam.
 

Wellsdw

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Time and copious amounts of water. Foam may help slightly but it’s not really designed for it. Burning ammo isn’t overly dangerous. Lack of pressure. There is some pretty interesting firefighting test done by niosh showing the fire effects on it. Biggest issue is the car is in a structure.
 
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Lithium batteries are a serious potential inferno
You can't even put them out if they go up, just try to contain and weight.
If you survive the fire, make sure you don't breath any of the smoke or you are in trouble.

Hash tag, eco! Lolz
 
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Someone correct me if Im wrong, but water cannot put out a lithium fire since it makes its own oxygen. So what good does a water cannon do, and why dont fire departments have some sort of chemical spray for the lithium fires? Pretty sure they just try to limit what burns around it right now until the lithium burns itself out. “Green” technology… lol
Good question, especially with more electric vehicles around and there will be a lot more in the future
 
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Quite an exciting day yesterday in the neighborhood. Rumors differ on how or why it caught fire but thankfully no-one was hurt. Apparently this is not that uncommon. You can hear the ammo cooking off in the video.

That’s pretty crazy, and a bummer

A few years ago I had an s-10 zr2 and I took it in for an oil change on my way back up the coast from work, it had about 90k miles on it and I figured the transmission fluid was original so I let them change that too, but they didn’t put the filler cap back on… few miles down the road I see smoke following me, so I’m looking for a safe place to stop in the open and away from traffic just in case (which was a smart move in hindsight)

Pull over, see tranny fluid boiling out and flames, call 911 knowing it wasn’t going to get better and got what I could out of my pickup… had a lot of stuff because I had just slept on a boat for a couple weeks.

Only firearm I had with me was a 454 casull, so made sure I grabbed that

Firefighters get there and a loud pop, one of them came up to me and asked if I had ammo in there and my stomach sunk, I had 2 boxes of ammo in the glove box for that pistol, that had been in there a few months… lesson learned, take ammo out of the rig if you aren’t planning to shoot it, because it’s easy to forget about, and if you do have a fire, it puts everyone on scene in danger, I felt like an asshole, because I forgot it was there, and they of course had no clue until they started popping off… their job is dangerous enough, so I do try to be better about that rather than having ammo scattered all over my pickup all of the time.
 

ODB

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I was recently in Houston and a Tesla drove by and the fans on it sounded like an airplane. I’ve never heard fans so loud on a car.
 
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