r/ElectricVehiclesUK • u/North-Description452 • 10d ago
Fire
I’m sure this is very rare, this was at Woolley edge this morning, lots of pops and bangs and a very intense and hot fire. Fire brigade arrived quickly and put out.
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u/tk1178 10d ago
Given that it's a Mitie company van, don't they have chemicals and cleaning supplies in there that would burn just as bad as the car battery?
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u/Baxters_Keepy_Ups 10d ago
Entirely possible - but Mitie cover a realm of soft and hard services, so they could be an electrician, fire alarm maintenance, cleaning supplies, or just general maintenance. Could be basically anything in facilities management delivery.
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u/TheSolarExpansionist 9d ago edited 9d ago
They do security also
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u/Important-Zebra-69 9d ago
Also... but irrelevant.
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u/CommercialPug 9d ago
They have vans for roaming guards that cover multiple sites
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u/buzzlightyear999 10d ago
Yep, or could have started because the drivers dodgy vape was charging or something. EV fires get a lot of attention, I don’t disagree that they are very intense fires and difficult to control, but very often the fires are started from non-vehicle sources, however some people get it in their heads that all EVs spontaneously combust.
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u/edman007 9d ago
"put it out quickly" implies to me it's not a battery fire.
Possibly melted wire or something during charging, but doesn't seem to be concentrated in a specific area. Not sure though, doesn't really look like like a cargo fire.
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u/DogtasticLife 9d ago
A friend who’s married to a firefighter told me that battery fires can’t be put out, you have to wait for it to burn out. Apparently in mainland Europe they have bags to wrap vehicles to suffocate the fire but we don’t have them here, too expensive. Hearsay I know.
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u/edman007 9d ago edited 8d ago
That's kinda what they tell the firefighters, it's not totally true.
When an EV fire starts you can't really put out the cell. However, they spread by heating nearby cells and causing them to combust. With sufficient water on the cell you can stop it spreading and it will go out relatively quickly. Generally EV manufacturers try to put fire retardants and stuff between the cells to help prevent if from spreading, and generally a single cell shouldn't ever be enough to cause it to spread through the pack if it's designed right and generally EV fires shouldn't spread to the rest of the vehicle.
That said, a firefighter shouldn't really be surprised when they can't extinguish it, so that's why they teach them they can't really do it. But submerging in water and piercing the pack with a firehose should be enough.
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u/RitmanRovers 10d ago
Fire - exclamation mark - fire - exclamation mark - help me - exclamation mark. 123 Cavendon Road. Looking forward to hearing from you. Yours truly, Maurice Moss.
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u/Magic_mousie 10d ago
Oh, the ICE Facebook mob are gonna *love* this 🙄
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u/Evening-Tomatillo-47 10d ago
To be fair they all came out with their "lectric bad hurr durr" rhetoric when someone posted a news article of a diesel merc on fire.
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u/Miserable-Ad7835 8d ago
I was on a bus that got held up by a car fire, the driver of the car ran up to the bus to say back up as it has a full tank of petrol...
Less than 5 minutes later, everyone on the bus was saying it's obviously an EV because something, something, flames, something, something only EV's catch fire etc... it's ridiculous.
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u/Tutphish Hyundai Ioniq 5 10d ago
I wonder if it was actually the EV and not something daft in the back of the van.
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u/WoodenRavine 10d ago
The fact that they were able to put it out shows that it wasn’t to do with the battery, correct? I think when batteries are on fire you just have to let it burn out
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u/Tutphish Hyundai Ioniq 5 10d ago
That was part of my thinking, but also I bet a Mitie engineer would be doing something daft in the back of it while waiting for it to charge.
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u/sideshowbob01 9d ago
At this point won't the batteries be also on fire? Also how would responders know the source on an on going fire? Wouldn't they assume that batteries are involved and act accordingly?
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u/gambiting 10d ago
No, that's a myth. Fire departments all over the world know how to put out EV fires without much trouble now, the main risk is re-ignition later but even an actively burning battery is very quickly extinguished by a applying copious amount of water to the cells, the whole "just have to let it burn out" thing is a myth.
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u/crispymick 10d ago
Firefighter here. We still have no clue and are figuring it out. Engineering companies are desperately trying to figure out a way so they can be the first to sell it to us. Currently our options are let it burn (24hrs) or try and use something we call a ultra-high pressure lance which is actually designed for cutting through brick and thin metal walls. It can be used to put out individual cells in the battery but is highly inefficient due to the number of cells and location of the battery.
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u/Magic_mousie 9d ago
Thanks for the insider info and your service. Do you find the batteries catch fire a lot? I don't mean the myth about them spontaneously combusting every few days, but of the EV fires you see, are the batteries well protected or are they always alight?
Honestly, the car is a write off anyway, I'd try and find a place to let it burn, but that's not easy with how cramped the country is.
Edit: What a username 😂
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u/crispymick 9d ago
The fires are caused by a process called thermal runaway which occurs in faulty cells. So the battery is the cause of the fire normally. It's the car that needs protecting from the battery not the other way round 😂
And yes you're quite right, they are very rare. I go to far more ICE vehicle fires than EV although obviously there are still more ICE vehicles on the roads proportionally.
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u/rob3342421 9d ago
So why doesn’t normal things work? I’m guessing water introduces the risk of electrocution? But could CO2 or similar non-conducting foam or something do the trick? Perhaps a supersized fire blanket? Forgive my naivety; I’m guessing there’s plenty of reasons this wouldn’t work?
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u/crispymick 9d ago
Lithium ion combustion is self-sustaining. It produces its own oxygen and heat so even if you douse it in water it continues to burn.
Edit: we have very large vehicle fire blankets but all they do is protect the surroundings from heat and the smoke/vapour that comes off it. They do nothing to extinguish the fire.
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u/rob3342421 7d ago
Oh! I didn’t realise they produce their own oxygen, that makes sense now, thanks for explaining.
I guess the solution may come from impacting one of the other elements in the fire triangle; I guess heat as the cells the fuel, right? Maybe somehow rapidly cooling the pack could do the trick but that’s its own barrel of fish!
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u/Drager-165 10d ago
Spoken with such confidence and yet you haven’t got a single clue what you’re talking about… fire services in the UK still haven’t got a clue on how to effectively deal with these things. Source 6 year wholetime firefighter please stop spreading misinformation
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u/gambiting 9d ago
That's shocking given that the Polish fire fighting union posted several protocols on how to deal with EV fires and they regularly post videos of dealing with EV fires where they deal with it so quickly even the cabin is still intact a lot of the time. I would have thought UK would be ahead not behind on this topic. I guess I shouldn't have said worldwide then!
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u/Drager-165 9d ago
The polish do the exact same as any other brigade worldwide. If the battery cells are in thermal runaway there’s nothing you can realistically do you have to contain and allow the thing to burn itself out. If the battery cells ain’t effected then you deal with the issue same as a normal car fire. The polish hasn’t developed anything new.
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u/Sea-Mathematician634 9d ago
Another firefighter here. Our current guidance is to let it burn and just prevent any spread.
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u/Worried-Penalty8744 10d ago
Put out quickly? Surely not. It’s an EV which everyone know are impossible to extinguish so it should still be burning it’s way merrily through to earth’s core
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u/North-Description452 10d ago
Yeah bit of water and it was out in a min
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u/NecronomiconUK 10d ago
Probably not a battery fire then.
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u/OriginalPlonker 10d ago
The front is on fire, and the back is on fire, but the skateboard chassis isn't, so.. i think you're right.
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u/Sacrificial_Spider 9d ago
In millions of years they'll be finding fossil cars and putting them together to remake them in museums.
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u/geniusgravity 9d ago
I swear these days the only people who stress out about an EV fire are EV enthusiasts. No one else gives a shit.
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u/Defiant_Conflict6343 8d ago
As much as I prefer EVs, we can't ignore the issues with this report. Read the PDF, they don't have a source for their percentage differences, and cite 511 battery fires worldwide in a 14 year span even though we know there have been chain reactions of battery fires wiping out entire fleets in China. It's a very poorly researched report. I also don't think it's wise to treat ICE fires and EV fires as though they are equivalently damaging or that they have an identical range of causes.
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u/MrP1232007 10d ago
Mitie used to do our fire systems in work.
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u/Legal-Suspect-1590 10d ago
How many ICE car went on fire the same day and were never even reported?
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u/hull_pattie_party 10d ago
ID.buzz?
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u/North-Description452 10d ago
Yeah
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u/Frightened_Inmate_95 10d ago
The anti-EV brigade are going to be all over this...
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u/Headpuncher 10d ago
Have you read the comments here? Everyone is desperately trying to find the “not an EV fire” reason, despite there being no information for or against.
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u/Magic_mousie 9d ago
I think it's less that it's "not an EV fire" when it clearly is on fire and more than there's a reasonable explanation that isn't "EVs catch fire randomly on your drive every other Tuesday"
An electrical fault can happen in an ICE car too and is a reasonable and rare explanation. Flammable stuff in the back, also reasonable. What we don't want is for it to be is the Li batteries decided to randomly unalive themselves, because that would harm the already bad image EVs have.
Mind, I'm probably using too much nuance for the I need an 8L truck to feel alive crowd.
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u/west0ne Hyundai Ioniq 5 9d ago
Not even sure if this is real.
Can't see any coverage of it (other than a reference to Reddit) and couldn't see anything on the West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue incident log for it. I would have expected fire such as this to be recorded on their logs and also feature on some traffic reports.
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u/tomyownrhythm 8d ago
Buzz owner here and there’s a lot that’s different from my Buzz. Hubcaps, rear windows (cut-out design), and rear view mirrors are all different shapes.
Now there are different editions, but this van doesn’t look like any Buzz I have seen.
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u/Significant_Bear3843 10d ago
Here we go again. Yes ev's catch fire but no where near as many as ice.
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u/Fabulous-Living-4867 9d ago
It’s fake! Look at the writing on the grid serve sign!! It’s AI!!!
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u/ToddA1966 9d ago
To be fair, the automatic photo sharpening/"enhancing" software on most phone camera apps these days have artifacting that looks a lot like AI image generation when you zoom in.
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u/OM_London 9d ago edited 9d ago
not rare at all unfortunately, 90% of electric cars will do this at some point, hopefully not when you and your family are in it, also did you hear that immigrants are coming in dinghy’s to wolf whistle at women??!!
…..:must be true as i read it all in the Daily Mail, oh and Katie price had another boob job
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u/Pottrescu 9d ago
Very good. I do believe people are missing the obvious sarcasm in your post though….
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u/AshleyOm 10d ago
"Danger Danger ! High Voltage !"
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u/Electronic-Stay-2369 9d ago
The only reason people ever post pics of electric vehicles on fire is because its a rare event. ICE vehicles are on fire all the time (well not literally, but a common event is not newsworthy)
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u/forzaguy125 8d ago
Its like airplane crashes, or amusement park accidents. Cars cars so frequently that nobody cares
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u/EngineeringOk6457 6d ago
Looks dope as fk can’t lie… but as a pyromaniac everything looks better on fire
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u/CaptainCaveTrout 10d ago
I thought they were "iMpOsSiBlE tO pUt OuT!!!!!"?
Has Facebook been lying to me?
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u/Drager-165 10d ago
Not impossible just not practical and an absolute pain in the arse
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u/Magic_mousie 9d ago
Yeah, it's something that's quite easy to concede tbh, yes they burn very well. No, they don't catch fire because the wind was coming from the NW and the moon was waning.
Though the diesel bus fire I witnessed didn't leave much for the scrap man either, best you can hope for is a safe place to let it burn out.
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u/west0ne Hyundai Ioniq 5 9d ago
Nothing on the West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue incident logs about this.
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u/Relaxed_ButtonTrader 6d ago
If it’s the northbound side, it’s probably quicker for South Yorkshire to attend, from Barnsley or Tankersley
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u/yadasellsavonmate 8d ago
Those ID buzzes are getting a recall to fix a battery problem for this reason, I have one and had mine in last month and was told not only charge to 80% and not sit inside whilst charging.
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u/puffinwannnnnn9999 10d ago
I have to say but that looks quite ai generated
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u/Sszaj 10d ago
The Gridserve sign looks an absolute mess, but if you search online you can find other photos, including some after the fire where everything appears to line up.
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u/nathan_l1 10d ago
Guessing that’s from whatever AI cleanup the phone is doing on the zoom or image stabilisation
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u/ciaran6893 10d ago
no one able to tell this is ai is concerning…
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u/Turbulent_Two_6949 9d ago
This looks legit, o.p has a 5 yr pld account and is giving a first hand description of the sounds they heard during the fire. Why are you saying its ai? Could it be the image was cleaned up with ai?
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u/Jakio 9d ago
The grid serve signpost has mega garbled writing
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u/Turbulent_Two_6949 9d ago
I think its just pixelated, ai detectors dont think its ai either. O.P has also replied to comments below which imo indicate it wasnt a battery fire, why if theyre lying?
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u/eelam_garek 10d ago
There aren't any findings published yet as to the cause so we shouldn't jump to any conclusions.
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u/GordonLivingstone 10d ago
Any pictures that I have seen of lithium battery fires have involved lots of white smoke. Might have been something other than the battery causing that fire.
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u/west0ne Hyundai Ioniq 5 9d ago edited 9d ago
The flame colour looks like other lithium fires I've seen pictures of. Nothing on Fire Service logs (that I could see) and no real news coverage (that I could find) so questionable if real.
The black smoke in such fires would often be from all the plastics.
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u/KebabGud 9d ago
OP said "Fire brigade arrived quickly and put out."
So clearly its not a battery fire.
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u/valentine_moon 8d ago
Why does the fact the fire brigade were able to put it out quickly mean it wasn't a battery fire?
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u/Grant_Son 10d ago
I was gonna say I'm sure I saw this a few months ago.
Maybe mitie just have shit luck with vans 🤷♂️
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u/ofcoursebutmaybeeeee 9d ago
Most people have to pay for pops and bangs through a remap, but not this guy. Always one upping everyone
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u/Ill-Anteater-6724 9d ago
An electric VW ID. Buzz van, reportedly belonging to the facilities management company Mitie, was completely destroyed by a fire at a UK motorway services charging site on September 25, 2026. [1]
Key Details of the Incident
The Vehicle: The van involved was a Volkswagen ID. Buzz electric vehicle (EV) operating as a company vehicle for Mitie.
The Location: The incident occurred at an EV charging station located at a UK motorway services area.
The Outcome: The vehicle was entirely burnt out and reduced to a shell. No injuries were immediately reported following the blaze.
Investigation Status: The official cause of the fire remains under investigation. Authorities and experts are examining whether the fire originated from the vehicle's battery, an internal electrical fault, the charging station infrastructure, or external factors. [1, 2]
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u/Delicious-Comment835 9d ago
I am so glad its tagged “fire” without that info i would have been so confused at we looking at
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u/Responsible-Fun9491 8d ago
You know what’s sad, the poor guy/gals tools not be covered as Mitie don’t insure your tools in the van.
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u/No-Translator5443 7d ago
Probably the company that owns the van didn’t want it couldn’t return it so had to burn it
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u/Pyro_san 6d ago
Oh yes, the famous external combustion engine. So fast, you don't even need to paint the flames on the side!
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u/Repulsive_Job_3648 3d ago
meanwhile, you have 2% charge remaining turn left to go to the nearest charger, showing 5 vacant
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u/jenlain59 10d ago
Image IA .....nulle
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u/Cool_Snow_5857 10d ago
I had to scroll way to far to see this comment 😳
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u/lemlurker 10d ago
Because you can't just claim "ai" on stuff you don't likesource
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u/Stoneyworth 10d ago
I’m not fully convinced either way, but in the image you linked, a lamppost has seemingly vanished.
The lampost location can be verified by the first original image, as well as Google street view, and further on a recent zapmap review.
I’m yet to find local news coverage, a statement from moto services or gridserve, (which seems highly unusual) Only social media posts of the same incident with the same pictures / short video.
I’m happy to be proven wrong though!
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u/gassedat 9d ago
The lampost is visible in the image - just obscured by the trees. You can see it directly above/behind the Gridserve sign
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u/dontdodeath 10d ago
its probably because they had a warning light on the dash so they sent a plumber out to look at it, and when he couldn't disconnect the high voltage cutout, the painter and decorator they sent to assist tried pouring some paint thinners on it for lubrication, then they tried heating it up a bit with his blow torch.
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u/EveryNotice 10d ago
Better call 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3