Talk:Vehicle fire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Fire Portal Vehicle fire is part of WikiProject Fire Service, which collaborates on fire service-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
Assessment comments This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
Suggested article edit guidelines: To help us prioritise our workload, and in readiness for Wikipedia:1.0, we need to assess our articles for Quality. If this article is Unassessed, please assess it. See the Article Classification for instructions. If you disagree with a rating, you can change it or discuss it at Article Classification. After assessing this article's quality, please make sure it to add it to the Lists at Article Classification, following the grading scheme detailed there.

Contents 1 Move to more general title 2 The myth of the exploding car 3 Temperature? 4 Car engines melt 5 Car fire process details

[edit] Move to more general title

What do you think about moving this to "Motor vehicle fire" or "Vehicle fire", as it is general to all such gasoline-powered vehicles? —Centrx→talk • 23:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The myth of the exploding car

On an unrelated site we were discussing the danger of going near a burning car, so I came over here to do a bit of research. I learned in drivers training, that cars do not explode Hollywood like, that one has about 5-10 minutes, before the fire reaches the passenger compartment. We were encouraged to carry an extinguisher and to first get the passengers out and then fight the fire by putting short bursts under the bonnet. The whole section on recommended action seems to have been taken from the US-American National Safety Council. This is not what experts in for example Germany will tell people. So this should be marked as recommendations for the USA and maybe expanded with recommendations from other countries (here is a site on car fires by the Municipal Fire Brigade of Graz, Austria, that encourages people to fight the fire after evacuating: http://www.bf-graz.at/autobrand.htm ). 89.49.19.26 19:37, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Temperature?

How hot are car fires? Hundreds of degrees? Thousands of degrees? —Lowellian (reply) 03:07, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Car engines melt

A news photo from the Oct 2007 California fires showed a burnt car with streams of molten metal flowing from the front. Presumably from the car engine. How common is this? What is the molten metal? What conditions lead to car engines melting? Magnesium melts at 1202 deg F. Aluminum melts at 1221 deg F. Steel melts at 2500-2800 deg F. -69.87.200.207 20:22, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Car fire process details

So, You Wanna Torch a Peugeot? How French hooligans set cars on fire. By Daniel Engber Nov. 7, 2005

"Rioters in France burned more than 1,400 vehicles on Sunday night, as the civil unrest that began almost two weeks ago continued to spread. So far, at least 4,000 cars and buses have been torched by angry protesters. How do you set fire to a car?" [1] -69.87.200.207 20:22, 26 October 2007 (UTC)