• KobaCumTribute [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    5 days ago

    it's lithium battery would be absolutely devistating fuel for the fires because those things are near impossible to put out.

    This is very tangential since a tiny drone would have burned up long before firefighters could reach it to do any sort of mitigation, but with EVs becoming more of a thing and them bursting into fire being a huge problem, fire departments have actually studied the problem and worked out how to effectively suppress that kind of lithium battery fire: hose down the chassis to cool it enough for someone in bunker gear to cut into the battery compartment, puncture the battery compartment in several places to create a corridor through it (so steam can escape without building up pressure) while water continues to be sprayed to keep it cool enough for them to work, then insert a hose directly into the battery compartment and keep a steady flow of water for several hours until the batteries have discharged and cooled below their ignition point. Turns out lithium car batteries are a lot less reactive than previously thought and you just have to cool them off and get all the stored charge out of them which is a lot faster and uses less water than was previously believed (previous methods were things like "drop the entire vehicle into a modified shipping container full of water and leave it there for two days"), and if done quickly can mean most of the cells inside the compartment never even ignite in the first place.

    I saw a video of a fire department testing and comparing different approaches a couple of months ago, and it was very interesting in a "dry recording of raw data" sort of way.

    • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      someone in bunker gear to cut into the battery compartment, puncture the battery compartment in several places

      That's just some unamerican bullshit right there. You're in the US, SHOOT IT WITH A GUN! Militarize our boys in red!