Comment by yreg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yreg | Hacker News Reader

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>As a firefighter you should know putting out lithium battery fire is very different. It burns much hotter, releases toxic gas. You can not use water to put it out, lithium reacts with water and releases more toxic gas. Water is like gasoline.

Dunning-Kruger effect? You are explaining to a firefighter who is presumably trained in this stuff that water makes the problem worse … when a simple Google search shows you that using (a lot of) water is the standard recommended procedure for EV fires across the globe.

https://www.ctif.org/news/150-000-liters-water-needed-put-ou...

https://www.iafc.org/topics-and-tools/resources/resource/iaf...

https://www.phoenix.gov/firesite/Documents/074742.pdf

https://www.dekra-roadsafety.com/en/what-to-do-if-an-electri...

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SR2001....

Yes, they do recommend pouring water on burning EVs, but this does nothing to extinguish the fire, it just keeps it under control, keeps it from spreading, until it burns out on its own. That takes 40 times more water and more time than extinguishing ICE car fire - one of your own links explains it.

Actually, the most practical solution to transporting electric cars by ferry might be to dump them into the sea in case of fire :)

As someone else said, the amount of water needed is a non-issue on a ferry…

Do they usually extinguish fires by pumping ocean water?

Seems so: https://www.carverpump.com/marine-fire-pumps-the-ultimate-gu...

Ships tend to have much, much more saltwater available than potable water, yes.

You mean like this?

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/one-dead-cargo-ship-fir...

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230726-deadly-fire-b...

What's your point? They are not running out of water.

There is a time limit on how long you can do that without sinking the ship, unless the whole thing is above deck and can drain off.

Fires on boats are terrifying. Second only to submarine fires, IMO.

Technically I was talking about lithium battery fire, not entire EV.

But not using water on electric devices, is one of first things we learn in safety training. Even fire extinguishers are not based on H2O, but specialized chemicals! I worked at UPS backup batteries.

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