California firefighters had to douse a flaming battery in a Tesla Semi with about 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of water to extinguish flames after a crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.
In addition to the huge amount of water, firefighters used an aircraft to drop fire removedant on the “immediate area” of the electric truck as a precautionary measure, the agency said in a preliminary report.
Firefighters said previously that the battery reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 Celsius) while it was in flames.
The NTSB sent investigators to the Aug. 19 crash along Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento. The agency said it would look into fire risks posed by the truck’s large lithium-ion battery.
Entirely valid and I agree that continual growth is right at the heart of most of our problems. I guess most of my frustration comes from the fact we’ve had at least 40 years of warning, 20 more years of proper, severe warning and promises for action and now that we’re seeing day in, day out that all the warnings were right, we’re still not moving with any real purpose. I genuinely thought that COVID would show us what we need to do and how we could do it but nope, slipped right back into business as usual.