Luton Car Park Fire Update
By Paul Homewood
There’s some more footage of the Luton fire, which gives a much clearer idea of just how big and explosive it was:
https://twitter.com/BabylonBulletin/status/1711879370741067949
https://twitter.com/FanHubHatter/status/1712043494598902266
https://twitter.com/omario_omari/status/1711865889295937959
https://twitter.com/CHSandhu886/status/1711875340614644195
It has been claimed by the Fire Service that the fire started on a Range Rover diesel, but experts are dismissive of this.
For instance, AA technical expert Greg Carter said the most common cause of car fires is an electrical fault with the 12-volt battery system. But he added that diesel is “much less flammable” than petrol and in a car it takes “intense pressure or sustained flame” to ignite diesel.
Regardless of the initial cause, it is difficult to see how the fire could have spread so rapidly without EVs being involved. According to Andy Hopkinson of the Bedfordshire Fire Service, within ten minutes, the fire had already spread across a “large number of vehicles and a number of floors”.
Can anyone honestly remember such a fire in a multi-storey car park before?
We should not regard it as a coincidence that Sydney Airport had its own electric car fire in its car park just a month ago:
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
EVs ?
Must be banned from multi story carparks
I’m not surprised there is little coverage by the MSM, the truth behind the safety of EVs is a carefully guarded secret. Just how many residential premises have underground parking and charging for EVs?
Absolutely Paul – the official explanation (which was rushed out in a ridiculously short time) just doesn’t pass the smell test. Not even close.
In the opinion of many – myself included – if that diesel Range Rover (how did they know it was diesel at that very early stage?) did start it off then it must have exploded with a huge force to create the carnage. Yet, the very rapid official version also rules out a bomb. Why?
Let’s keep at this – we need the truth.
Probably they had the number plate.
“Yet, the very rapid official version also rules out a bomb. Why?”
I won’t rule out “bomb” until investigators have positively ruled it out.
That’s my life experience, electrical faults in 12V system most likely cause of a car fire, this will be true in future as the EV fleet ages.
Range Rover has been making diesel hybrids since 2013
Conspiracy theory: Rover uses vegetable sourced insulation on their wiring.
Squirrels like to eat vegetable sourced insulation.
Neighbor had to have his Rover rewired because of squirrel* damage. No one else around had any problems.
*S. carolinensis
My mates VW Transporter had a veggie wiring loom, eaten by mice.
I would imagine that insurance companies are taking a close interest in this. This incident alone is going to cost them many tens of millions.
Maybe. Paradigm shift pending.
No, it won’t cost the insurance company millions, they will just put everybody else’s premiums up to cover it!
In a free market, at least one insurance company will keep its rates low by refusing to insure (or only at a cost that covers the risk) EV’s and hybrid vehicles. Consumers will choose that company.
Then, the other companies will do the same, or go out of business.
👍
Precisely so 😡
Comments on other sites have mentioned a huge fire in a Liverpool car park back in 2017/18 which caused massive destruction. It started with a diesel SUV – one of the JLR products.
The flammability of diesel is not a primary issue, as I see it, since vehicle fires usually start with electrical faults, oil/hydraulic fluid/fuel leaking on to hot turbos/exhausts, etc.. Once the vehicle is alight, it will burn whatever the fuel/power source.
” It started with a diesel SUV – one of the JLR products.” Whichis exactly why you should never, ever trust the press or hear say! Hear is the official report into that fire. Item 7.5 clearly states ” The owner provided me with the vehicle details, telling me that it was a light blue Range Rover, he also gave me the vehicle registration number. Heexplained that he had owned the vehicle for approximately 5 years, that it had a current MOT certificate and that the car had a petrol engine.
Click to access kings-dock-car-park-fire-iit.pdf
Ray S; thanks for providing that accurate info and correcting the vehicle fuel.
It answers Paul’s question about other large car park fires, started by an ICE in this case.
I’m just amazed that ‘authorities’ – especially around airfields – don’t insist on sprinkler systems – and better – in multistorey car parks.
2017/8 NYE Liverpool King’s dock MSCP Fire
Is there any way of knowing how many EV cars were involved in the blase?
I read elsewhere that yes it was a diesel, but also a hybrid – meaning it had a bank of lithium batteries. Nice propaganda twist by the MSM if true.
I think Tesla knows where there cars are.
Even if it was not an EV car that started the fire, once the fire had spread to any closely parked EV cars, then the Lithium Ion battery would propagate the fire in such a way that to try to put the fire out with water would result in the release of hydrogen gas and make the fire much more intense. Only solution would be to let the fire burn itself out.
I think the consensus is that the only 2 ways an EV battery fire will cease is either to let itself burn out or dump the vehicle in a large tank of water. Clearly the latter is not a practical proposition as (a) car parks don’t have such tanks, (b) too many cars on fire, (c) as is now plain, there’s a risk of collapse, (d) too risky to operate in that environment, (e) no emergency vehicles available locally that can perform that operation, & (f) they couldn’t move anywhere near fast enough even if such vehicles and water tanks were available.
This company has developed a EV Containment Unit that uses water turning to steam to suppress fire development around the vehicle and continually cool the battery compartment to help prevent thermal runaway from developing.
They stress that it is not a submersion unit because battery manufacturers state their batteries should not be submerged in water as this can initiate or accelerate thermal runaway.
https://www.fire-containers.com/
From the BBC website
Liam Smith, crew commander at Leighton Buzzard fire station, said that when he arrived, the fire was mainly on the third floor.
But it quickly spread down to the lower floors when the third floor started to collapse.
He said there were “lots of electric vehicles potentially involved quite early on”, though the fire started in a diesel car.
“We decided to go defensive, which is basically where we decide to externally firefight rather than send firefighters in, for their safety as well.
“The cars were parked very close, next to each other.
“So unfortunately that was probably the reason for the rapid fire spread.”
“We decided [sic] to go defensive…”
As if there were ever a choice! Why is it that every single person, at or above a certain level of importance in this country, is a pompous ass?
Extraordinarily lucky, for the main stream narrative that EVs are benign, that this disaster happened at night; and therefore nobody was killed.
A particularly silly part of the cover story was the pretence that two women somehow came upon the burning car, noticed two empty extinguishers by it, and casually went downstairs to get some new ones. After all, most women are well known for recklessly “having a go” when ever there is a chance of a bit of pyrotechnic fun!
Ian, the collapse of the floor was inevitable as the reinforced concrete degraded due to the intense heat of the fire, together with huge weight of the Lithium Ion batteries.
I also heard that the weight of the LIOB shortens the life of the tyres by 40%. Presumably there will be an increase in high speed front tyre blow-outs too?
By Brian O’Hara
I’m not an expert on car fires, but an EV battery fire has a ferocity and intensity that marks it as a ‘fingerprint’. The picture of the alleged car fire certainly displayed that fingerprint ferocity. If it is proved to be a battery fire the EV car industry will fight tooth and nail to keep it quiet.
Maybe it was a diesel car. But once an EV was also set aflame…
So car park owners run the risk of the whole car park being destroyed in a fire if they insist on making parking spaces too small for modern vehicles, as most of them do.
The cars were parked very close, next to each other.
“So unfortunately that was probably the reason for the rapid fire spread.”
That’s alright then. Won’t happen again, especially not in a multi-storey carpark………!
+1
There are THREE temperatures for fuels. The Flash Point [a measure of flammability], the fire temperature [the point a fuel vapour will continue to burn when the source of ignition is removed] and the autoignition temperature [the temperature at which fuel on a surface will ignite.
Ignoring the fire temperature, petrol has a flashpoint of -43C and diesel 52C so petrol is highly flammable and will easily ignite with a flame or spark. Petrol has an autoignition temp of 280C and diesel 210C so in a leak onto a very hot surface it is diesel that will ignite easier.
https://www.london-luton.co.uk/parking/electric-vehicle-charging
London Luton Airport has 6 Tesla Chargers, and 4 type 2 points available to the public. They are located on the 2nd floor of Terminal Car Park 1.
Sounds like a good idea leave your EV on charge and fly away what could go wrong.
Maybe they will have to allocate special parking spots for EV’s and Hybrids that have fire suppression systems above them.
“In terms of which fire extinguisher to use for an electrical fire, you will need to use one which is non-conductive. With an electrical fire, you should only use extinguishants such as powder or CO2 (carbon dioxide).”
How Ironic you need CO2 to put out a EV fire.
So, if your BEV burns out and CO2 is used to extinguish the fire, how many trees to you have to plant to cover your CO2 footprint?!!
CO2 extinguishers – the new definition of ‘carbon cycle’? 🙂
By what means does a CO2 extinguisher work on an EV fire?
I wouldn’t use a CO2 extinguisher on a car fire. They work by removing oxygen for a very short period. If there’s enough latent heat the fire will normally restart very quickly. Foam or powder would be my choice. That said I would never park an EV in a house garage or multi story car park.
Although now retired, after nearly 50 years as a mechanic and garage owner I can catagoricaly say that diesel would not flash up like that.Diesel systems on modern car disapate the high pressure system within seconds of a leak being detected or after the engine is turned off.Lithium- ion batteries from the far east are however a different matter.
Would I have an EV in my garage next to my old Triumph? absolutely not.
look under the vehicle on fire and compare it to other EV fires they all have that characteristic pool of molten liquid spewing out of the battery.
Watch the EV insurance premiums. It may be that EVs have been rushed to market before full safety checks have been carried out. Hard luck on their owners.
Watch ICE insurance premiums too. There are not enough BEV vehicles to load the risk premiums on just those alone.
What a daft thing to say. Of course ICE premiums will rise: they will be subjected to more damage by EV cars and will inflict more expensive damage on EV cars in collisions.
With respect, the greater proportion of the risk is borne by the BEV vehicles, thus the owners should bear the cost of that increased risk. If I take out medical travel insurance you don’t pay an increased premium for my medical conditions when you take out your travel insurance. If your house is on land known for subsidence then I don’t pay an increased premium to cover the risk of your house falling down.
Because there are many more ICE cars those owners will end up subsidising the BEV owners, once again.
You comment that you have not heard of many multi-storey car park fires, so it might be worth reviewing the following document.
Click to access Merseyside-FRS-Car-Park-Report.pdf
It also includes other examples of where this has happened over the past 20 years or so.
The most worrying thing is thus report pre-dates the build of car park 2 at Luton, but states that sprinklers are highly recommended to stop the spread to other cars. It also details how these fires spread and how much energy is given off. Also highlighted is the now common use of plastic fuel tanks.
In terms of diesel, it is likely that the oil system was initially alight, which would have generated heat. Any gas, including air, within the fuel tank would expand and compress the fuel, bringing down its flash point.
For a £20m car park for 1,800 vehicles not to include sprinklers and advanced monitoring is unbelievable.
It is interesting that this Liverpool fire took two hours to even spread to 30 cars.
Luton took ten minutes to spread throughout
Sprinklers of course would be worse than useless for evs
Andrew Montford this morning posted:
https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1712366564849099235?s=20
The car park looked flimsy, I would have thought sprinklers were a must have in multi story car parks. The structural steel was unprotected, so once it got to red heat (500C) it lost its strength. In the video it does look like the flames have some velocity, but apparently witnesses tried to put out the fire, but ran out of extinguishers, and then there was an explosion, just wait for the fire brigades report. They will report the truth, it is in their own interest not to cover up the cause.
just had this e-mail …
Our hottest Hybrid and EVs are here! 🚗
Don’t miss out on these great deals!
Remember the old Coal Board advert “Come home to a real fire”
the modern version is – ‘ Buy an EV & you’ll come home to a real fire’
And I remember the Not the Nine O’Clock News advert too:
Come home to a real fire…buy a holiday home in Wales!
The collapse of the car park is surely a big giveaway to the intensity of the blaze?
I can’t remember a single comparable incident where entire floors of a multi-story car park have collapsed due to a car catching fire.
This is now a major safety flaw with EV’s. Media and vested interests can suppress it all they want but well-heeled potential customers are usually tech and social media savvy so will be well aware.
Would YOU buy an EV if you had to park it in a confined space, perhaps under your own home? Only a matter of time before insurers for ferries, underground car parks and the like throw a big spanner in the EV works.
I think the liverpool arena car park fire destroyed 1300 vehicles and suffered a partial collapse. Looking on the bright side, these smug EV drivers are going to continue suffering ‘anxiety range fear ‘ and now they will have ‘parking fear ‘, ‘insurance fear ‘ and ‘depreciation fear’ on top.
For most, it’s already ‘purchase fear’.
The fire risks of multi storey car parks are well understood and the building regulations contain specific advice.
However the building regulations contained specific advice on cladding. But the Grenfell inquiry revealed a lot of expert effort and resources were tasked to bypass the intent of the regulations
Nobody yet has mentioned building regulations and whether the intent of the regulations had been complied with in the design of the car park.
All basement and underground parking is protected by wet sprinkler systems.
I read that Grenfell followed EU standards which superseded UK standards which had been much stricter regarding cladding.
I agree 100% with that comment – and the British standards were set by my former (and late) colleague Cllr Andy Roberts and a colleague of his when they were both senior firemen in the West Mercia (?) force, after an investigation into a fire that cost the lives of two firemen.
The Labour government of the time gave in to the lower EU standards, with the results we all know…
Andy Roberts and I were both Cabinet Members in Worcestershire County Council, until 2021.
Thanks for this reply, this type of knowledge gets buried by the Civil servants, Ministers and EU supporters.
Having waded through the regulations at some length at the time, I can say that they were designed to obfuscate, with constant obscure cross references to other documents and use of circumlocutory language and jargon. Doubtless this was to obscure for any ministers concerned what they were in fact signing up to. The plain fact is that they failed to require adequate fire testing of cladding installations on taller buildings, motivated by going green which trumped safety.
Of course that green motivation loomed large in the Grenfell planning application as well. However, when I calculated out their claimed savings it worked out as a 200 year payback period on the £10m investment.
Although some reports suggest that electric car owners are less likely to experience a fire in their vehicles, at least one study that looks at figures from the Department for Trade suggests the opposite to be true. In this analysis of London figures, there is a 0.04% likelihood of a petrol or diesel car catching fire but a 0.1% incident rate with electric cars.
London saw 500 EV fires over last 5 years
Hybrid vehicles are more likely to catch fire than any other type of vehicle.
Oct 2023
https://housegrail.com/car-fire-statistics-uk/#7_Electric_vehicles_are_more_likely_to_catch_fire_than_petrol_and_diesel
I’d like to see Data that compares the rates for vehicles no more than 15 years old. Prior to that apart from one or two examples there were very few Hybrids far less pure battery cars on the roads. That would compare like with like
“there is a 0.04% likelihood of a petrol or diesel car catching fire but a 0.1% incident rate with electric cars”
What an absurd statement. Do the writer mean a 0.1% chance during the life of the car or a 0.1% chance per annum?
Looks like it was started by a diesel Range Rover Sport
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/11/london-luton-airport-fire-car-parking-garage-live-updates/
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the vehicle types here and this is in part not helped by Land Rover/Range Rover naming
The company is Jaguar Land Rover.
Land Rover is also part of the brand name, as is Range Rover.
The following two vehicles are essentially different branded products/body shapes in the medium vehicle size and are not off roaders to any degree and limited in towing (2.0 tons generally)
Range Rover Evoque
Land Rover Discovery Sport (this replaced the Land Rover Freelander 2)
A Land Rover Discovery is NOT the same as a Land Rover Discovery Sport. The Discovery (NOT Sport) 3, 4 and 5 are much larger vehicles with the V6 2.7/3.0 litre diesels. I have a Discovery 4 (sometimes denoted LR4 or Disco for convenience). Its the big 4×4 capable of proper off road and heavy towing (up to 3.5 tons).
A Range Rover Sport is essentially a rebodied Land Rover Discovery – fast back boot etc. and bigger engine options (eg V8 diesel vs V6 diesel, V8 petrol etc) More chavvy and flash than a Discovery (without the Sport) but pretty similar off road and towing capability.
A Range Rover (no additional words) is the top of the range big, luxury 4×4 off roader – all the size and capabilities of the RR Sport or Disco. As long as you don’t mind spoiling the carpets or walnut dash. Loved by “County” types and shooters.
There is also the newer Range Rover mid-size such as the Velar and now the replacement Land Rover Defender, which is not aimed at the old utility/farmer market anymore but the horse trailer-owning shires/county types currently driving Disco’s.
As a PS, the older Range Rover Sports were never released in anything other than diesel or petrol, no mild hybrid ever AFAIK. The new Range Rover Sport will be an EV but is not due for release until 2024.
No sprinklers, in a car park? Who approved those plans? Also, everyone talks about Petrol and Diesel, but the most inflammable liquid in any car is the brake fluid as I understand it!
Sprinkler systems are very good for “ordinary” fires, probably including all conventional car fires, but EVs are different. The Li-ion batteries burn very fiercely, so that firemen tend to leave them alone to burn out, rather than seek to extinguish them. A normal sprinkler system would probably be totally inadequate to deal with an EV fire.
Totally agree that sprinklers would be ineffective on an EV fire, but it may have cooled the structure and stopped the spread through non-EV vehicles?
Interestingly, previous comments suggest that CO2 would out out an EV fire. So, if you’re caught on an EV fire you might die in the fire of suffocate in the release of CO2. TPTB have really thought this through…not.
There is a demo video online of saline solution being used to extinguish an EV fire. Sorry, don’t have a link but obviously the car ferry companies are aware of the risks of EVs, especially after one ship transporting brand new cars in, I think, Scandinavian waters burned to a crisp.
Buried in this Daily Mail article:
‘The flames then spread rapidly to the lower floors as a string of electric cars caught fire in a domino-like effect, one firefighter suggested.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12620505/Luton-Airports-car-park-fire-sprinklers.html
I don’t recall hearing anything about several electric buses catching fire in Potters Bar earlier this year. Very odd that….
Anyway, here it is:
https://www.thefpa.co.uk/news/fire-at-potters-bar-bus-depot
Yes Kelland, the silence appears to be deafening on that Potters Bar fire. Could anyone explain why that might be?
However, yesterday ….
“An electric bus station fire could cause high-rise residences to erupt like volcanoes, residents fear
Fears of a “thermal runaway” under apartments have prompted calls to abandon a £1.7 billion development in Edgware.”
https://www.fia.uk.com/news/an-electric-bus-station-fire-could-cause-high-rise-residences-to-erupt-like-volcanoes-residents-fear.html
Perhaps those idiots who said a fire sustained by aviation fuel couldn’t have brought down a skyscraper will shut up now. Perhaps not.
Yep of coarse it can. It will not ‘melt’ the steel but will make it malleable and bend & distort under any pressure.
The car park only partially collapsed as expected
The fires were not put out
All the flammable material including the fuel for over a thousand cars burnt it self out.
As most of the aviation fuel was seen to explode outside the building leaving mostly furniture for fuel.
A Partial collapse would be the most that would happen.
As with other towers on fire for many more hours.
There are no service pipes that would explain these obvious explosions
https://ibb.co/KW306X6
But a building would not fall through the path of greatest resistance.
A conspiracy theorist might think these are explosions happening a long way below the point of collapse.
https://ibb.co/7SshY63
Ever heard of gravity?
The image you post gives no idea of the relation between where it is and the building overall. But it is more than likely that service pipes of various kinds were responsible for causing what you show.
Matt on the ball, as usual:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/matt-cartoons-october-2023/
Gamecock thinks about all the stiffs who had laptops in their boots. Good luck getting the insurance company* to believe it.
*So who is liable? The Rover owner? His insurance might cover one other car, and not damage/loss of sales to the car park. The car park? I don’t see how. But they have deeper pockets. Car parks may have to redesign their businesses and structures. EV spaces outdoors only and 50 feet apart? That would hurt the Luton Airport’s business. Perhaps existentially.
Has a stationary, parked, diesel vehicle with no engine running, ever in the past, anywhere in the world spontaneously combusted? If so, how many times (perhaps less than the number of human beings who have done so)?
Even if this is a first, the fact that EVs must have been in the car park and contributed to the explosions and spread, and the lithium contained certainly meant the fires could not be extinguished (even if there had been sprinklers), surely means that EVs must immediately be banned from enclosed car parks, especially those underneath residential and commercial buildings – which must now be recognised as catastrophes waiting to happen?
“and the lithium contained …”: the most persuasive account I’ve read about what happens when a lithium-ion battery goes on fire explained that the lithium plays no role. The fuel is the organic electrolyte and the oxygen comes from the electrodes.
That is incorrect. Lithium is quite reactive. It burns easily, and hot. Like its neighbor on the periodic table, sodium.
Lithium batteries DO use graphite anodes, but it’s the lithium that is the scary stuff.
Not only stationary diesel vehicles do not spontaneously combust; petrol vehicles don’t either.
I read somewhere that Chrysler have told EV owners not to keep their EV within 50 feet of their property,
…as an aside of the “EV started it” argument. UK car parking spaces are just far too small and close together. They are dangerous and damaging. Just for profits
It’s not only the car parks where you have to pay. The spaces are also narrow in supermarket car parks and many are too short for normal size vehicles.
I think it is very clear that the original fire was in the hybrid lithium battery of a Range Rover MHEV diesel, which was supplying motive power when it overheated and likely cut out. The fire brigade record having been alerted at 8:47p.m., which is probably a couple of minutes after the 999 call which would have triaged the caller for details. By 8:52, when the video of the vehicle on fire was taken according to the local press, the fire had obviously started to spread to other parts of the vehicle.
https://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/transport/luton-airport-video-shows-car-engulfed-in-flames-hours-before-multi-storey-car-park-partially-collapsed-4368267
The woman who took the video reported that they went in search of another fire extinguisher, but by the time they got back the vehicle fuel tank had exploded and there was nothing they could do. Not that a fire extinguisher is much use against a lithium fire anyway, which is possibly what the driver found out if he tried it. She tells her story in slightly more detail here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12620203/We-tried-stop-Luton-airport-fire-Eyewitness-reveals-husband-rushed-fire-extinguishers-saw-Range-Rover-ablaze-late-stop-flames-destroyed-20m-multi-storey.html
Note she reports that she could hear the fire engines on their way when they got to the scene, before the video was filmed. I’ve read, but cannot immediately re-find, reports that a couple of fire engines attended the third floor to begin with. Several fire brigade comments mention that there were a number of EVs close by, and it seems likely that the fire spread to these, making it far too risky for the fire engines to remain. Once it had taken hold, it spread quite rapidly. There are videos showing the third floor alight, others showing it spread to the 4th floor roof level, before spreading to lower floors as parts collapsed. It would be interesting to get timings on those videos.
It could be that the fire brigades who will think through strategies including fires in semi-enclosed spaces such as multi-storey car parks, will conclude that an established fire (from whatever cause) will spread to any EVs therein. Therefore the safest action is to let it burn.,
Just to clarify the timings, according to Andy Hopkinson of the Fire Service, they got the 999 calls at 8.47, and two fire engines arrived on the scene within 10 minutes, and were immediately faced with a rapidly escalating fire
See the interview on BBC here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67073446
Another piece of the timeline:
Russell Taylor, 41, an account director from Kinross in Scotland, saw the flames after flying in to Luton Airport from Edinburgh.
He said: ‘There were a couple of fire engines with a car ablaze on the upper floor of the car park at just after 9pm.
‘A few minutes later most of the upper floor was alight, car alarms were going off with loud explosions from cars going up in flames.
‘The speed in which the fire took hold was incredible.
The fire was only formally declared a major incident at 9:38p.m. which 8s perhaps when collapses started, 51 minutes after the fire Brigade were called..
I found the official government database on vehicle fires. It provides only very rudimentary details: there is no separate description for a battery fire, which just gets lumped in with electrical fires, and no description of vehicle type beyond car, van, HGV… Almost half of all fires are deliberate (126,000 out of 274,000) vandalism or arson. That will skew the statistics because such fires are predominantly going to be in poorer communities where car joyriding etc. is more common, and thus tend to involve older vehicles.
The following article, published not long after the fire started, includes an eye-witness account saying the fire started on the top floor where, according to the emergency services, the source was a Tesla that was being charged…
‘VIDEO: Luton airport plunged into chaos as massive fire suspends all flights’ [10th. October 2023]:
https://www.canarianweekly.com/posts/VIDEO-Luton-airport-plunged-into-chaos-as-massive-fire-suspends-all-flights
Can anyone honestly remember such a fire in a multi-storey car park before? Yes. In Liverpool a few years back. It was all over the news. Not an EV.
Yes, see this:
Click to access 2022-08_Facts_and_Myths.pdf
The Sydney fire was caused by a damaged EV battery, that was removed by non-professionals, and then left out in the rain with a damaged casing. The removed battery should have been taken to a certified facility for correct discharge and recycling.
The cause is irrelevant
EV fires can happen for all sorts of reasons, but it is the consequence that matters.