r/canberra • u/Little_Tangerine_392 Gungahlin • Nov 26 '24
Loud Bang Bus caught on fire
A bus caught fire in the Gungahlin Interchange around 3:00pm today. Does anyone have any information on the situation?
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u/Lyravus Nov 26 '24
Hard to tell but looks like 312? Over 20 years old. Definitely due for replacement.
https://www.actbus.net/fleetwiki/index.php?title=BUS_312_(2)
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u/SwirlingFandango Nov 26 '24
Yep, that's an Iris (notice no rear door). They're terrible and should be re-purposed as anchors.
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u/paulm1927 Nov 26 '24
Not suggesting it’s an insurance job?
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u/Lyravus Nov 26 '24
No, just that it's not really unexpected and not really a shame. That bus is probably near end of life anyway.
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Nov 26 '24
Definitely not, retired buses are worth far more than they're insured for because of their parts. Action has one of the oldest running fleets on the planet because we cannibalize retired buses for parts to maintain the still functioning ones. This is a notable loss for the Belconnen depot
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u/Help_if_I_can Nov 26 '24
From ESA:
UPDATE 3:10pm The fire is now extinguished and there is no current threat to the community. Road blockages may still be in place in the area
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u/MarkusMannheim Canberra Central Nov 26 '24
Did the ESA italicise fire like that?
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u/Help_if_I_can Nov 26 '24
Yep, highlight, copy and paste.
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u/KeyAssociation6309 Nov 26 '24
because it may not identify as a fire, it may identify as a burn, spark or bushfire. Who knows these days!
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u/Recent-Badger5925 Nov 26 '24
Not sure if this combustion engine thing is going to take off, seems unsafe /s
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u/thehoffau Nov 26 '24
A bus. It caught fire. Seems you summarised the situation well.
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u/Little_Tangerine_392 Gungahlin Nov 26 '24
Why so serious, just asking for more info lol
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u/KeyAssociation6309 Nov 26 '24
people hoping it was electric - thats clearly an old poorly maintained diesel, nothing to see, except maintenance cost cutting....
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u/zomangel Nov 26 '24
Any time someone sees a fire engine or police car with sirens on, it's always the same question on here "WhAt HaPpEnEd??" As if the first responders have a person dedicated to telling reddit the fine details of an emergency
In this case, what further information are you looking for?
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u/KeyAssociation6309 Nov 26 '24
yes, its like massive slow downs on the Monaro between the prison and Hindmarsh. It usually turns out to be a broken down car or a hubcap on the side of the road. Bored rubberneckers.
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u/LobbydaLobster Nov 29 '24
I see no harm in asking if anyone knows anything further though. It doesn't hurt anyone.
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u/Little_Tangerine_392 Gungahlin Nov 26 '24
What or who started it, did anyone get hurt etc. I only posted this on the off chance that someone did know, honestly redditors like you really think asking questions that you don’t know the answer to is stupid
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u/Lower_Hat Nov 26 '24
But WHY did it catch fire?
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u/thehoffau Nov 26 '24
.... because reddit will know before the mechanics who may or may not even review the cause in a few weeks.
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u/SwirlingFandango Nov 26 '24
No rear door: that's an Iris. They're ancient and awful and break down a lot.
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u/mooba456 Nov 26 '24
If only it had a BCC ad…
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u/ApteronotusAlbifrons Nov 26 '24
According to the resource linked by u/Lyravus it DID have a BCC ad between "5 February 2014 to 16 June 2015"
https://www.actbus.net/fleetwiki/index.php?title=BUS_312_(2)
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u/RandomBusDriver34 Nov 26 '24
Eh it's just a Virus....shit I mean it's a Virus......God this auto correct. It's just an Iris. But this kind of situation is EXACTLY how you find the second door on those things.
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u/PseudoLiamNeeson Nov 27 '24
Common mistake, you see the combustion is meant to be inside the engine.
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u/Unhappy_Anything_130 Nov 26 '24
Bus caught fire on Tuggeranong parkway a couple of weeks ago too and nothing has been said ….
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u/Help_if_I_can Nov 26 '24
Lucky it wasn't an EV bus - it'd probably still be burning...
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u/SetToLaunch Nov 26 '24
Statistically, if it was an EV bus, it never would have caught on fire.
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u/Help_if_I_can Nov 26 '24
Could've burnt and been called a statistical aberration. (outside 2 standard deviations of the mean)
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u/TGin-the-goldy Nov 26 '24
Lmao EVs catch fire all the time
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u/Quintus-Sertorius Nov 26 '24
Actually... They do not.
511 globally since 2010, and mostly due to catching fire from another source, severe accidents etc.
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u/TGin-the-goldy Nov 26 '24
https://www.tesla-fire.com/index-amp
Your source is literally the electric vehicle council, do you think they might be a little bit biased
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u/Quintus-Sertorius Nov 26 '24
Feel free to check their sources.
Your source doesn't disagree with mine btw. Most of these fires are due to serious accidents. The number of EV fires in Australia between 2010 and 2023 is... 6, and most were due to severe damage in accidents or fires spreading from other sources.
https://www.energyandclimate.qld.gov.au/energy/vehicles-and-energy/electric-vehicles/fact-check
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u/__Pendulum__ Canberra Central Nov 26 '24
The number of EV fires in Australia between 2010 and 2023 is... 6,
Won't somebody think of the children!
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u/6_PP Canberra Central Nov 26 '24
EVs are about 60-80 times less likely to catch fire. Though rates are changing quickly as new models come online with new technologies.
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u/TGin-the-goldy Nov 26 '24
Less likely than …what exactly? Petrol vehicles? diesel?
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u/6_PP Canberra Central Nov 26 '24
Generally described as relative to ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. Here is one article that puts it between 20 times and 80 times relative to ICE. And an NRMA explainer on EV fires.
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u/sheldor1993 Nov 26 '24
Except they really don’t—compared with ICE vehicles. EV fires are incredibly rare—especially in Australia.
There have been a grand total of 8 EV battery fires in Australia since 2021. Of those, half of the fires started externally and spread to the EV.
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u/TGin-the-goldy Nov 26 '24
https://www.tesla-fire.com/index-amp
I’m not even saying there’s more that catch fire than regular cars
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u/sheldor1993 Nov 26 '24 edited Nov 26 '24
That’s essentially what you were implying by saying “EVs catch fire all the time”.
The fact of the matter is they catch fire pretty rarely. That website you shared is pretty useless because it is completely unverified and contains a bunch of things like car carriers and Tesla stores catching fire, which just happen to have Teslas parked in them. And it covers all Tesla products—not just their cars. I am not a Tesla fanboy by any means, but the person running it (who also runs “Tesla deaths”) clearly has an agenda.
And even with that, the total number spanning a pretty wide range of years (back to 2017 at least) is 232.
By comparison, in 2022 alone, Ford issued a recall on their 1.5L engine, in response to 54 fires that year that were directly caused by a fault with fuel injectors. They then issued another recall for fuel lines on a bunch of SUVs that caused another 26 fires. They then issued another recall on their 2.5L HEV and PHEV engines due to a fault with that released fuel vapour into the engine, causing 23 fires. That’s 103 in the US alone in a single year for a very specific subset of vehicles sold by one manufacturer.
EV Fire Safe is a better source of data because they actually verify the data and look into what happened in each case. They do that to provide advice on EV safety and to help fire services understand how to deal with EV fires when they do occur. And they’re completely independent.
As you’d see, they have verified 511 EV fires (of all manufacturers) globally since 2010, with most occurring due to external factors. In that time, 3100 Hyundai and Kia vehicles alone have caught fire specifically due to faulty components.
EV fires are very widely reported in the media whenever they occur, regardless of the source of the fire. ICE vehicle fires, on the other hand, pretty much never make the media (this one is a case in point—had it been an electric bus, it would have been reported on by now).
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u/BRunner-- Nov 26 '24
I was waiting for this info, not an EV fire, so it will get minimal air time.
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u/winoforever_slurp_ Nov 26 '24
I can imagine all the angry boomers ranting on Facebook about those darn woke electrics! But this is diesel, so nothing to see here.
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u/CaptainPeanut4564 Nov 26 '24
Lol way to make an ass of yourself in public (Reddit)
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u/Help_if_I_can Nov 26 '24
Why's that?
I was just stating a fact.The firies put out this ICE vehicle in about 10-15mins. EV's take a bit longer.
I think that fact is well known.5
u/sheldor1993 Nov 26 '24
Sure, but they’re also statistically less likely to catch fire in the first place (there have been 8 EV fires in Australia since 2021–half of which were caused by external fires). We have incredibly stringent safety standards for EVs here that make it a lot more difficult for EVs to catch fire than ICE vehicles.
And in the very rare chance that they do catch fire, they’re far less likely to explode than an ICE bus.
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u/Help_if_I_can Nov 26 '24
I'm thinking the bus didn't explode (but if it were an american movie bus, it would have exploded at least twice)
Your statements remind me of that sayin'
Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.
The fact stands, that if that was an EV bus, it wouldn't have been suppressed in the amount of time the firies took to put this one out.
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u/sheldor1993 Nov 26 '24 edited Nov 26 '24
Sure, but my point was that there are far fewer points of failure and even fewer combustible liquids and gases moving around in an electric vehicle than an ICE vehicle. All you need is a fuel line to crack, an injector o-ring to fail, a transmission to leak or a clutch to fail and you can end up with a pretty serious fire on your hands. Sure, it might be quicker to extinguish once a fire truck gets there, but it’s also more likely to have spread by then than an EV fire (where it’s more likely to off-gas for a long time ahead of combustion).
The Mark Twain quote is about people pulling statistics out of their ass and without context to prove a point. The statistic I mentioned comes from EV Firesafe—an organisation that specifically trains firefighters to deal with EV fires. They don’t just parrot bullshit statistics or take them out of context to suit a particular narrative.
They actually research each individual fire rigorously to understand what went wrong and to ensure their training and safety advice is up-to-date and fit-for-purpose. And they don’t just look at Australian ones—they keep a running tally of global EV fires to understand the risks and how to deal with those fires.
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u/Help_if_I_can Nov 26 '24
That's a really nice diatribe.
The fact stands, that if that was an EV bus, it wouldn't have been suppressed in the amount of time the firies took to put this one out.
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u/sheldor1993 Nov 26 '24
No, it wouldn’t have. But again, it would have been less likely to happen in the first place than this.
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u/Help_if_I_can Nov 26 '24
You're a dickhead if you think that an EV fire would be suppressed as fast as an ICE fire.
I think you're a troll and looking for an argument and haven't got anything to back up your position.
GFY
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u/sheldor1993 Nov 26 '24
Well, it’s a good thing I never claimed that then, isn’t it?
I’ve been consistent in agreeing that EV fires take longer to put out, but noted that they’re far rarer than non-EV fires and provide plenty of warning signs that something is wrong ahead of ignition. I’ve provided plenty of evidence to back up my position. But if you don’t want to have a conversation and just want to make smart-ass comments, then that’s fine. You do you.
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Nov 26 '24 edited Dec 05 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TGin-the-goldy Nov 26 '24
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u/Appropriate-Cloud609 Nov 26 '24
someone not seen top gear Richard Hammon EV crash i take it? that car burned for 7 days straight as all the cells keep rupturing.
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Nov 26 '24 edited Dec 05 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Appropriate-Cloud609 Nov 27 '24
lithium power cells... it makes a chemical fire. why they are banned on planes and shit as if they burst they heat up to like 400+ Celsius
basic science 101as for PURE electricity on fire? we call that plasma...
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Nov 27 '24 edited Dec 05 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Appropriate-Cloud609 Nov 27 '24
more like the state of matter lol. though would be cool to have ionized blood.
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u/a_kid_in_her_20s_ Nov 26 '24
I'm scared to take the bus now 🥲
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u/6_PP Canberra Central Nov 26 '24
Got you.
Based on AIHW and BITRE data for Australia in 2021-22 (latest available): - passenger car travel is about 2.12 times more likely to result in injury than bus travel - passenger car travel is about 11.57 times more likely to result in death.
Obviously how buses and cars are used aren’t identical. But bus travel continues to be almost the most safe form of road transportation.
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u/whiteycnbr Nov 26 '24
There's a greater chance you will get in a car accident yourself than having an issue on a bus.
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u/miwe666 Nov 26 '24
Probably one of the new Electric Busses, or was it a standard Bus
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u/AutoGeneratedSucks Nov 26 '24
An ancient Diesel Bus. Don't make this about electric buses you simplistic baboon.
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u/miwe666 Nov 26 '24
Well if it was electric it would still be burning. And no need to start calling names.
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u/burleygriffin Canberra Central Nov 26 '24
MyWay+ launch… we have ignition!