Get an electric scooter they said ...
(twitter.com)
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What the fuck was he trying to do? Anyway it's not easy to put out an electric battery fire as far as I know. Fire extinguishers are the best option but even that may not be enough.
A lithium battery on fire is actually 3 different kinds of fire - its a chemical fire, an electrical fire and a metal fire all in one. When the 787 dreamliner was experiencing battery fires I believe the fire brigade at Boston airport basically discovered nothing really put it out and they could only really stop it spreading with enormous volumes of foam. Basically your best bet with a lithium battery fire is to let it burn itself out and maybe put it somewhere where it can't set fire to anything else or put out anything near by that starts to burn.
And the massive volumes of foam doesn't actually stop anything, it just solves fire the one 100% guaranteed way: Vaccuum. Sufficient foam removes all air. No air, no fire.
self oxidising fires exist and I think some forms of battery fire can self oxidise
True, which does make them much harder to either strip all oxygen from, or replace all with pure oxygen. If the object itself contains oxygen in its chemical makeup, pressure needs to be maintained as well. A true vaccuum will still kill it (as opposed to merely smothering it which wouldn't work), but that's not something even the average science lab has on-hand, let alone some hick in the suburbs.
You have to get one that's rated for chemical fires
Grab a fire-proof blanket and try to wrap it up and drag it outside and let it burn itself out I guess. Oh and hope that it doesn't explode too much while you're dragging it :D
Or, if you rent and have household insurance: call the fire department and prepare to write an insurance claim, preferable while looking up if a vehicle inside a residence is even covered.
Most reliable option is a huge bucket of sand. They'll have to get huge containers full of sand to extinguish burning electrical cars. Seems like a really good idea to push for more electric cars when the cars exploding make it a bitch to extinguish. In this case here I'd try to get it out and hope it doesn't explode more.
It better be literally tonnes too, for an electric car's battery bank I imagine it might be a big enough energy source that if you don't enough there's a real chance of it containing it briefly, then blowing up and showering molten glass everywhere.
He's panicked, which I guess I could understand if he hadn't already come to terms with owning an electric scooter and the things you should file in your mind as a result. Just like I cooked up a plan when I built a 3d printer so that, in the event that heater runaway doesn't set my house on fire.
Yet, he does, and didn't, so now he's running around and slipping on floors instead of getting the right extinguisher (best case) or just GTFO.
I'm with others on battery fires, you don't extinguish them, at best you contain them and minimize collateral damage.
The energy is already there in multiple forms (it's the worst hybrid of a chemical, electrical and metal fire all at once), and unlike a regular fire getting it under combustion temperature won't even stop it for long, as there's still a massive chemical potential and damaged containment between it.
Honestly the best you can have for a contingency plan once ignition has occurred is to have something sufficiently long and insulated that will let you relatively safely drag it the fuck outside in the early stages and just hope for the best.