‘Out of control’ fire aboard a massive car-carrier ship spotlights the calamitous consequences o

Seventeen miles offshore from an island belonging to the Netherlands, a nearly 20,000-ton vessel loaded with vehicles is burning “out of control,” and officials are in a race against time; Lea Versteeg, spokesperson for the Dutch coast guard, reportedly said, “we’re currently working out to see how we can make sure that...the least bad situation is going to happen.”

A Daily Mail article out yesterday reported that at least one crew member had died while “many” others were injured, while another outlet identified the site of the chaos as a priceless environmental gem. From ABC News:

Its location is close to a chain of Dutch and German islands popular with tourists in the shallow Wadden Sea, a World Heritage-listed area described by UNESCO

‘Out of control’ fire aboard a massive car-carrier ship spotlights the calamitous consequences of electric vehicles

Only 25 of the 3000 vehicles were electric, according to the article.

This is a world heritage site and important for migratory birds.

At least one dead. Several wounded, and as most cars are plastic/synthetic the fumes are very noxious.

I’ve live off grid on a solar powered catamaran. I have solar off-grid house in the Philippines, and drive a Niro hybrid (my second), so I am for this tech but not the way they are trying to force. We need better batteries for mass adoption. Anyone who’s done this know gas generator backup or hybrid is necessary.

They need to stop forcing EV on people who don’t want them. I got an email from Honda saying it was turning its entire fleet electric. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

a reply to: pianopraze

There's a string of reports from here in the UK of batteries on e-scooters and electric bikes exploding too.

The incident was just one in a series of recent incidents associated with e-bike and e-scooter batteries, which have prompted warnings from fire brigades.

Just days before, a woman and two children in Cambridge died in a flat fire likely caused by an e-bike on charge.

London Fire Brigade alone has attended 86 fires involving an e-bike this year, and 18 involving an e-scooter.
news.sky.com...

I'll stick to me petrol powered car.

Dealing with a metal fire on a boat is a bad day. Got plenty of sea water to pump in to help take out the heat, but also provides an oxygen source to keep the fire going at those temperatures. If it burn through the hull, ship down.

The insurance companies are great at being bastards at times, if there is going to be some kickback to the war on carbon going on, these companies are at the tip of the spear on the economic front.

a reply to: pianopraze
So many problems with lithium batteries-even if we ignored the many environmental issues a huge problem is we are paying China for most of it one way or another,which is not making the world or its environment any better.
I would not like to be on that ship.

BTW-

I’ve live off grid on a solar powered catamaran.

That sounds like fun!

There was a dive excursion boat that caught fire here a few years ago. All the passengers were in the bunks below and they all died.

The captain and crew were up top, and they survived. It was awful for them to not be able to do anything to help the passengers.

The fire started down below where cell phones were being charged near the only door to the bunk room.

Horrific tragedy. Commercial passenger boats now have upgraded requirements due to cell phones and modern electronics.

What's all this hand-wringing about EV battery fires? There were 1529.9 fires per 100k for gas vehicles and just 25.1 fires per 100k sales for electric vehicles in 2020. Autoweek.

1500 gasoline fires.
25 EV battery fires.
Conclusion?
EVs catch on fire.

a reply to: schuyler

Ok, but what are the stats on the percentages? A lot more gas cars than EV's
What percent of the gas cars vs the electric?

Not sure where to find that info, but I'll go looking

Looked up registered numbers for the US
About 282 million gas cars
About 158,000 electric

Seems better odds of electric burning to me?

a reply to: schuyler

Did these gas vehicles spontaneously combust while parked in a garage? Did they catch fire while being refilled?

Or we these consequences of accidents?

a reply to: schuyler

25 EV battery fires.

Electric vehicles are still a small proportion of vehicles on the road , I wonder what the comparison would be if it were a 50/50 split.

a reply to: chiefsmom

He basically posted the percentages for you, you just need to shift the decimal.

Gasoline: 1.5299 cars catch fire for each 100 cars.
EV: 0.0251 cars catch fire for each 100 cars.

In other words, gasoline cars catch 60 times more fire per % wise. Sixty times more often than an EV, a gasoline car catches fire. No matter how many or less of each are registered, it is the nature of % that says EV are 60 times safer than gasoline cars.

Believe it or not.

a reply to: CoyoteAngels

Did these gas vehicles spontaneously combust while parked in a garage? Did they catch fire while being refilled?

This happens, too. Remember there is oil and fuel plus a battery. Batteries cause fires. Loose or leaking fuel lines, this happens.

The only arguments that connect to the number of registrations is peoples fault. Like fallen cigarettes, cheapo electronics and such.

Although this was while moving:
I know someone who's car burned down because of an oil leak onto the exhaust manifold, while driving. He stopped to let a friend out suspecting nothing, suddenly the car stood in flames. The wind kept the fire down while driving, the oil spread under the car. But when he stopped the car whole stood in flames in seconds.

Don't fool yourself, while car's won't explode like in the movies, when accidents happen, you have heat, fuel, hot oil and sparks in the front. And like I wrote, it's not unheard that car catch fires because of unseen damage, marten eating on the insulation, faulty batteries (etc).

a reply to: TDDAgain
Sorry, don't know where my brain went.

To be honest though, the data even in that article is skewed, as it uses cars sold.

It also states that hybrids have the most fires!

a reply to: TDDAgain

the gas vehicles were being operated when they caught fire tho'. Im thinking more of hours later sitting alone in the garage after people have gone to bed. And particularly while being charged.

Mackinaw island Michigan hasn't allowed motor vehicles in a hundred years and they have banned electric bikes and such because of fires. Just an FYI

a reply to: pianopraze

Evidence this came from an electric battery?

What we have here is deep seated Russian propaganda. Russia is one of the largest exporters of oil, much of their economy is based on the good old carbon chains. This means electric vehicles present a HUGE issue to the Russian economy; if the world were to move towards electric vehicles, which it is, Russia would lose money every year from now on.

It would be in the interest of Russia to slow down the manufacturing and the sales of electric vehicles, because every extra year of oil sales sustains the beast a year longer.

If you were working with that agenda, you might write articles like this, have no evidence that it was an electric vehicle, all supposition at this point... but you might make it seem like it is definitely a battery, because that might scare people away from buying electric. Mission accomplished. Not super high level disinfo, but effective.

Here are news from this side of the pond:

apnews.com...

We're literally DOUBLING the car charger network, making it easier for people to charge on long distance trips. It is projected that by the mid 2030s, about 20% of the vehicles remaining on American roads will be gas powered. And by that time, many of the new charger stations may be solar.

originally posted by: TDDAgain
a reply to: chiefsmom

He basically posted the percentages for you, you just need to shift the decimal.

Gasoline: 1.5299 cars catch fire for each 100 cars.
EV: 0.0251 cars catch fire for each 100 cars.

In other words, gasoline cars catch 60 times more fire per % wise. Sixty times more often than an EV, a gasoline car catches fire. No matter how many or less of each are registered, it is the nature of % that says EV are 60 times safer than gasoline cars.

Believe it or not.

But somebody made a good point.
The numbers aren’t really useful if you’re comparing bananas to monkeys.
Without scrubbing the data and comparing accidents to accidents or sitting stored to sitting stored, you have nothing that’s worth a theory.
Just anecdotally it seems like the EVs are catching fire in the most unexpected situations, like just sitting there in the driveway or a garage, not even running. Charging is obviously a consideration.
There’s not even a comparable scenario for gas cars.
I’d bet almost all the gas car fires originate from accident damage.

The main difference is that gas powered cars catch fire when some one is around, batteries sometime catch fire when every one is asleep. Then you have the people who will run lithium batteries down to zero, then fast charge them on a hot day. There are people who will charge their phones in direct sunlight on a pile of clothes and then continue using the phone after it swells a bit.

We do need better batteries though and the safer LiFePo batteries are not it imo. They are sitting on the tech getting all they can out of the old tech.

originally posted by: gortex
There's a string of reports from here in the UK of batteries on e-scooters and electric bikes exploding too.

That's just people burning them out, for the menace that they are.

a reply to: gortex

Here's the problem. The majority of cells used in electric cars, bikes, scooters and other things are made in South Korea and Taiwan. Wholesalers buy the cells in huge lots and then sell them to the companies that use them. Some wholesalers buy cheap fake cells from Chinese companies. These cells are mixed in with the others so that the wholesaler makes more profit. It is these cells that create the problems and the fires.

As far as the ship is concerned, get the crew off and then torpedo it. That will take care of the fires and will probably do less damage to the environment than trying to fight the fires and save the ship.