Ever seen video of that electric bus fire in China? One bus goes up, takes another five parked next to it with it, 150 fire extinguishers laying around next to it that did nothing at all, and a fire department that let's it burn out when they arrive.
Once a lithium battery has gone thermal runaway, that's about all you can do - at least with the equipment the typical FD has.
It probably blew the system into the backyard of a place two blocks away!!
It surely did at some point - other aerial video of the fire showed entire chunks of the building/roof completely missing,
so the suppression went with it no doubt.
While I completely agree no fire suppression system works well against explosions this wasn't an explosion at the point when the fire suppression was activated... It was a relatively small fire, that suppression failed to control due to the uncontrollable nature of burning lithium.... It grew into a much bigger fire & eventually multiple explosions....
By stating no fire suppression system works well against explosions the implication is it was the explosion that caused the fire fighting/suppression efforts to fail when actually is was the material that was burning that caused the suppression efforts to fail...
Hope all the fire fighters got out safely.... Takes a brave man to walk into that situation....
Perhaps, but you assume much here - do we know how the fire started? Do we know there weren't any initial explosions or the timing
of same?
On another video, fire officials said when they were summoned that they were told that the buildings' systems needed much more supplemental water - that makes sense, given how intense lithium fires are (as well as how high their temps are and how long they
burn once going - some larger fires have been known to burn for days).
Further, lithium fires typically are accelerated by attempts to extinguish by water - not only does it tend to intensify the burn,
but mixing water with the burning batteries can create hydrogen gas - and we all know how unstable THAT is, especially if
present near an ignition source.
In the video I linked to, the presenter references the fire already having been involved for 25 minutes and it's obvious the fire authorities have been there a while (including interior work, which I can't even fathom you'd want to do with a lithium fire!).
"State of the art" suppression systems could mean almost anything - but given the size of the facility and the materials being
handled, we can probably rule out any gas-based system (which requires a smaller, airtight environment to operate in).
If they aren't referring to some manner of rate-of-rise deluge water based system (all sprinkler heads are open element,
flooding the area with everything the supply can give them), then perhaps they had a form of foam system similar to that
used in airplane hangers and such, which are armed/triggered by detection of both heat and smoke.
We don't know what they had and I'd certainly be curious to know...
Bottom line here:
Until we have a reliable report on a)how the fire was triggered; b)what fuel(s) were involved in the fire; c)what suppression system
types were installed; d)what the pattern of attacking the fire the authorities deployed and e)the impact to surrounding people and
environment, anything is conjecture at this point.
So the suppression system didn't work, state of the art. They knew what it was going to be used for.
They also knew how to get a small town to approve their facility for construction - and this is what I fear might be the case.
Especially when it comes to dealing with a possible fuel that can experience "thermal runaway" (again, that exact phrase was
used by at least one authority I saw interviewed) without any exterior help whatsoever....
coupled with a typical fire department told to bring all the water they could (which you DON'T use on lithium fires, ESPECIALLY
in an enclosed space!)....
This was a catastrophy waiting to happen, simply put.
