Crikey, imagine the insurance claims. 1400 vehicles times say, an average of five grand plus damage to the building and consequential claims.

Looks like our premiums will be going up again.

Interesting thought about the limited propensity for diesel to spread fire, however, We did an experiment in the yard on the fire station, and unlike petrol, it was quite hard to get a pool of diesel poured onto concrete to ignite.

Point noted re. the ancdote concerning the experiment in the yard ... however I can't come up with a better one as, at all the stations I ever worked at, no-one could be bothered to raise the enthusiasm - least of all me - I spent as much time reading Bill Bryson, and Wilbur Smith, washing and polishing the car and examining the back of my eyelids as possible ... and became highly accomplished by the end. It's vaguely possible things are different now.

Probably not now, KB. I speak of 15, 20 years ago, having retired myself ten years since.

Like you I spent a lot of my career wasting time between shouts, though we were forced to do an increasing amount of training when the modernisers finally arrived at Brigade HQ in the late 80s. Still, believe it or not, the petrol/ diesel thing was one of the more interesting, if not particularly useful exercises we did on the yard. Most of the others involved flinging ladders and hosepipes around with barely controlled abandon and wasting tens of thousands of gallons of water into the bargain.

Oddly enough, the fire station where I spent much of my career stood just across the road from where the Liverpool multi storey fire happened the other night. Had it still been there (demolished a good few years ago) they might have put it out more quickly, especially as there was a hydraulic platform on site.

There are far more flammable products in a car than just diesel - brake fluid, plastic interiors, seat materials, rubber etc and all these will simply start to burn once the glass shatters from the flashover heat.

All the materials you mention are indeed flammable, but none will ignite instantly, especially inside a closed vehicle. For that fire to develop into what we saw, it will have spread by instantly ignitable fuel. The only such thing available is petrol, unless there was something similar stored or in a car boot perhaps. And the space is not as confined as the living-room in the well-known videos, it's a multistorey with open sides. Presumably the fuel tank in the LR exploded.

Interesting. If the old land rover was 'responsible' and was found to lack an MoT, and its owner was a farmer with a few hundred acres (£8,000 per acre) to their name, would they face ruin?

Interesting. If the old land rover was 'responsible' and was found to lack an MoT, and its owner was a farmer with a few hundred acres (£8,000 per acre) to their name, would they face ruin?

Ruin? For about 12 months . Then start again with a clean slate after declaring bankruptcy...

Not sure if it still applies, but as someone who grew-up in the middle of the Peak District in the 60s, the oft used phrase "no such thing as a poor farmer" was certainly true.

Reminds me of a TV documentary some time ago where the film shows farmers meeting-up to organise a protest (where they are complaining about something that was going to affect their income) ................ they are all in Range Rovers and Q7's.

Edited by nick62 on 02/01/2018 at 14:25

Or "pin the tail on the donkey"?

From a report in today's paper, the French are trying to emulate us. Reports of 1,031 cars set alight on New Year's Eve, up from 935 in 2016, mainly in the cities.

www.thelocal.fr/20180102/increase-in-new-years-eve...e