A Tesla Model S that had been totaled in a crash all of a sudden ignited after sitting in a California junkyard for 3 weeks, and firefighters struggled to place out the three,000-degree flames for greater than an hour.
Firefighters thought they’d extinguished the blaze a number of occasions, just for the battery pack to rekindle, even after junkyard staff helped flip the automotive on its facet to permit for spraying the battery straight, The Washington Post reported final week. Finally, crews used a tractor to dig a water-filled pit and submerge the automotive.
A spokesman for the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District stated the trouble required 4,500 gallons of water — about the identical quantity used to place out a typical constructing fireplace — and that officers did not know why the automotive “spontaneously caught fire.”
It was the primary time the division had battled a burning Tesla, although such occurrences are anticipated to be extra widespread as electrical car gross sales enhance.
“This is a whole new animal for the fire service,” the spokesman, Capt. Parker Wilbourn, informed the newspaper. “We’re still trying to wrap our heads around the EV fires.”
Tesla’s Model S information for first responders particularly warns towards submerging a car in water to extinguish a battery fireplace. It says such a blaze usually rekindles, can require 3,000 to eight,000 gallons of water “applied directly to the battery” and would possibly take as much as 24 hours to completely cool.
Source: www.autonews.com
