OT: Fire at Moss Landing

Go Woke, go broke.

Go to sleep, rest in peace.

Whereas petrol - no problem at all with fires. Your skewed right-wing agenda is a joke.

TW

Yes, petrol can be a problem. The morning after the Buncefield explosion I was easily able to see the plume of smoke from a location 35 miles south of Buncefield.

"Huge fire at Moss Landing battery plant spurs evacuations, road closures, sends out plumes of toxic smoke". January 16, 2025." "

"Church said the fire was “contained” inside a concrete building whose roof had collapsed."

"Vistra sells the electricity stored there to PG&E, which also owns a separate <=== It's not the Megapacks, as you would expect 182-megawatt battery storage plant on the north side of the site that has 256 Tesla “Megapack” battery packs. That facility did not appear to be burning by 8 p.m."

"fire was detected in the 300-megawatt Phase I energy storage facility,"

"Phase 1 began operating at the end of 2020.[21] It is made of LG JH4 cells in TR1300 racks in two storeys in the old turbine hall." "In September 2021, Phase 1 was shut down after a high temperature event caused by a leak in a liquid cooling hose"

( with help from

The fire then, is in the first battery section, not the newer section. The reason it's in a concrete building, is it is the former turbine hall, maybe the turbine hall that used to have the supercritical steam project in it. As the fire is well-engaged by the look of it, pointing a few deluge cannon at it, is going to make no difference at all :-)

This also means, the battery plant was not built from scratch, with the right spacing between elements in the battery. It is a retrofit to a building, for better or worse. It's an "investment, designed to burn". The megapacks would be out in the open, and following whatever engineering rules Tesla uses for their stuff. I'm not impressed by Tesla as a company, but when there was a fire in their stuff, there was one rack damaged, and a tiny bit of heat damage to an adjacent rack, so only two racks would need replacing. The fire doesn't seem to spread quite the same way in their design.

Paul

Isn't the California fire service quite busy elsewhere?

I was so nearly blown to bits by the Buncefield explosion. The building where I worked was all but demolished. If it hadn't been early on a Sunday morning...

Who would store 250 million litres of petrol/diesel/kerosene in above-ground tanks in an industrial area?

They left that to burn itself out eventually.

nib

I heard the bang - which rattled my windows - here in Surrey. A good 30 miles away.

That is not the reason given for not tackling it.

Petrol fires can be put out with foam - as we saw at Buncefield. How do we put out lithium battery fires?

Try not to be a complete twerp. And skewed in what way? That we can't put out petrol fires? And that sorting out lithium battery fires is a doddle? Do tell

- I'm keen to know.

No, they extinguished it with foam. Afterwards, one of the damaged tanks caught fire again, and that was the one they left to burn out.

You could have discovered that for yourself, but perhaps you couldn't be arsed.

No, I know that. It's a bit personal, as you might realise. I read all of the reports. They didn't put all the fire out with foam, part of it re-started, and they had to balance the effect of the fire with the ground pollution of the chemicals. It also took them several days to extinguish what they did.

Had it been in work time there would have been hundreds dead. My desk was crushed under wreckage.

nib

You can't deploy all of them, because they need backup and infrastructure, to do their work.

This is why you can't deploy everybody, because each fireman you deploy, you have to plan the escape route for that person.

Some of the ravines in Cali are a death trap. Full of vegetation and steep as hell. The ravines are even dangerous when there isn't a fire (civilians are advised to stay out of there).

In some areas, there isn't water pressure to fight fires. And the Quebec water bomber flying there, apparently it is dropping

Fighting fires on flat surfaces is much more pleasant. And having water pressure is handy too. No city water system has excess capacity to be running a thousand fire hoses.

Paul

I woud suggest that fires in petrol (and still less, diesel) cars which are something to do with the fuel are quite rare considering the number of such vehicles in use. I've never had a vehicle catch fire in over fifty years of driving. Neither has anyone I know. Have you?

Have you not heard about car batteries catching fire of their own accord, making placing the vehicles inside garages quite inadvisable?

yes, My wife was driving with our two young daughters. Smoke started appearing from under the bonnnet (hood|?). She stopped at the roadside & got the girls out just in time. about 45 years ago.

Yes, sorry, I hadn't properly appreciated that for you, it was in the nature of a near-miss.

I suppose the trouble in the UK is the same old shortage of space. We just don't have the room for the infrastructure that 70 million people need, with proper separation to boot. I was surprised that it took them several days to accumulate all the required foam, essentially the entire country's supply, near as I could tell. And even more surprised that no one noticed that they were able to just keep on pumping petrol into that tank.

But there again - look at 9/11. No one got triggered by the notion of people wanting to be taught how to fly a big jet, but without wanting to know how to take off or land them.

Close-ish, twice. One carburettor fault where a stuck float had it pouring petrol out into the engine compartment; noticed a wet stripe on the road behind when I got home. The other was an electrical fault on an old British car with minimal fusing, lots of smoke from under the bonnet but just burnt wiring, one wire burnt right out and saved much of the rest. Lucky both times. A friend had a Lotus Europa go up, not much left of that, just an engine and chassis and a black mass of burnt plastic smeared on the road; he was quick-witted enough to push it away from the house.

nib

On 17/01/2025 19:07, Tim Streater wrote: ught fire again, and that was the one they left to burn out.

If you have a skewed left wing agenda it is far easier to scream a trigger word like 'brexit' 'racists' ' climate denier' 'transphobe' 'islamophobe' than look up facts. Its very fashionable amongst the partially educated..

What was burning?

A part of the car (wiring, for instance), or the fuel?

Generally its wiring that starts fires. I had a car that used to boil petrol out of its carbs onto a hot exhaust manifold after a hot run. Never caught fire.

But one spark would have been enough

Its rare for cars to catch fire. Unless they have lithium batteries in them