The district fire departments are preparing for a new location. Because: To extinguish an electric car you need a lot of water. This was shown by a fire in Hebertshausen.
Hebertshausen - The exact cause of the fire of an electric car in Hebertshausen about a week ago is still not clear. The BMW factory fire department, which was also alerted, had taken care of the BMW 330 E after the Hebertshausen fire department extinguished the hybrid vehicle after 90 minutes of hard work. The case is still being examined, says BMW press spokesman Frank Wienstroth. "Very extensive investigations are necessary, and the responsible authorities are involved," said the spokesman yesterday. It can be assumed that the bolide, which was only a few weeks old, caught fire due to a technical defect.
When used at the charging station in front of the Hebertshausen town hall, the BMW works fire brigade brought their so-called "Mulde" or "Redboxx", as it is known in specialist circles. It is a container that is around seven meters long and two and a half meters wide and has a capacity of 23 cubic meters of extinguishing water, in which the electric car can be immersed. In Hebertshausen, however, the "trough" was only used to remove the BMW 330 E. It is, however, fundamentally an important tool for extinguishing e-cars; for two reasons.
On the one hand, you have to know that the battery of a damaged electric car, consisting of hundreds of individual battery cells, can only be removed by permanent cooling, i.e. watering, due to the permanent electrical short circuits. And here the "trough" saves water. Secondly, it simply increases the safety of the fire service.
The damaged vehicle - after being pre-extinguished - is pulled into the container via the lockable tailgate using a winch and a network of belts or ropes. The “trough” is then flooded and cooled until self-ignition is no longer possible. The "Redboxx" can also be used to extinguish straw or plastic bales that have caught fire and to cool down gas bodies.
Despite the accident of the electric car in Hebertshausen, the acquisition of a “trough” is not an issue for the fire departments in the Dachau district. "A trough is not necessary," said district fire inspector Maximilian Reimoser. "We only have to adjust to longer times when extinguishing and need more water." A "trough" is particularly necessary in the event that the battery of the vehicle is damaged and it has to be cooled in a controlled manner, says Reimoser. However, the district fire inspector points out that the extinguishing of an electric car is fundamentally no different from that of a petrol engine.
