The cars on the top floor are fine according to the pictures, how theyre going to get them down the ramps another guess.

I park in this car park regularly, although not yesterday thankfully. Car fires in mult storey car parks are not unheard of but never on this scale. The car park is located next to the Mersey and the wind last night was blowing hard and this must have made it difficult to contain.

I also wonder whether the design played a part. You progress upwards using a low gradient ramp in the middle of the structure that has parking bays on each side rather than the traditional design of a short steep ramp between levels. You do a 180 round the corner at the end along a flat mezzanine level then 180 at the end back onto the ramp that runs the entire length of the car park for a slow rise up to the next level.

With cars parked on either side of the ramp a ruptured petrol tank at the top would see the fuel run down the ramp gradient spreading the fire.

Wasn’t an electric car

Reports saying an old land rover with LPG.

CCTV stills show an l322 ranger rover on fire….

Guess this is one reason most multi stories in USA and Canada don’t let LPG vehicles in ?

I read that there was an equestrian event on at the Arena. A high proportion of horsey-set vehicles will bump up the individual claims cost a bit. Glad no animals went up though….

Reports saying an old land rover with LPG

did the gas explode or was it an electrical fault?
Just because it has LPG [ and petrol I assume] it does not make either of these a cause

As for the start of the fire there are pictures on the local papers website taken by an ex footballers wife showing the old land rover on fire.

It was interesting to hear them explain that they had put their phones, cash and luggage in the car before evacuating the structure too!

At work we have a 5m thick reinforced concrete pressure vessel we have to keep below 50 deg C or it can cause irreversible damage. So yes, that car park structure is buggered.

Does make you wonder though, why dont they have sprinklers? Not much good for directly fighting an oil based fire but a decent sprinkler system can contain gas and keeps the structure cool enough to resist spreading the fire through conduction.

Does make you wonder though, why dont they have sprinklers?

I don’t know a huge amount about sprinklers, but an open structure would mean the water pipes dip below freezing and then burst when warmed. You can get around that by using a dry system but they’re expensive. To try and stop the fire moving by some sort of curtain system would be impossible due to open sides I would have thought.

Also, the heads are vulnerable to damage from traffic in the carp ark.

Maybe mandatory fire extinguisher fitment in cars would have helped. Or an increase in funding for the fire service. Or maybe they could have called out a fire truck from Liverpool airport carrying a shit tonne of foam?

In the end, this has happened once. All the cars in it are most likely insured and the building too. It’s not a Grenfell, stuff can be replaced.

Sprinklers are a major expense, aside from the installation and maintenance you need a water supply. There are a number of options for this and in this location you could use the Mersey but taking supply from a water course is rarely done because of the filtering problems it causes. Much more common is to have to build a water storage outbuilding. It’s all major expense and for what? Like any type of decision like this it’s a balance between risk and expense and that decision has been vindicated by this incident, no loss of life, no significant collateral damage to adjacent buildings, no contingent liabilities. All the financial risks associated with an incident of this kind have been transfered by insurance, at an individual (cars belongings), and corporate (car park structure) level. You manage risk by either transferring it to someone else, removing it altogether, and if you can’t do either of those reduce it as much as possible.

Everyone involved transfered their risk of major financial loss to their insurance company, including the owner of the building. Let their insurance cover do it’s job. Someone weighed up the expense of sprinklers versus the chances of really bad things happening which they couldn’t adequately risk manage, notably loss of life, and that all appears to be sound decision making in my view.

Very well put @shakers97

Hmmm… I know a bloke currently getting messed about by his insurance company. His car was lost when the workshop it was in caught fire and it looks like the claim for his car will be on his own insurance. He’s gutted (as was the car) as he’s lost a packet on it and has had to stump up for a new motor.

One of the dealerships my wife manages was burnt down twice last year. They’d just rebuilt it when it was gutted completely by fire the week before xmas! All customer cars lost in the blaze as they were in the workshop.

It was interesting to hear them explain that they had put their phones, cash and luggage in the car before evacuating the structure too!

Interesting to know what you find “interesting” did you hear the bit about them having 6 children with them? or didnt that “interest” you? Maybe they wanted to focus their efforts on getting out safely. I can imagine the alternative headline “motorists return to cars to pick up valuables, endangering emergency services”
It sounded to me like she was very calm and proactive.

i think their point was that it was unlikely they left a their expensive belongings in the vehicle and it was to bump up the insurance claim

in the carp ark

2x2s rather than 4x4s? 🙂

In terms of the sprinkler issue…. nobody died. Although the bill is going to be pretty big its trifling compared to the cost if anyone had been injured or killed so iIts only a financial loss. And a modest one in the scheme of things. Whatever measures there are to slow the spread of fire and means that allowed everyone to escape in a building full of flammable plastics, upholstery and ample quanities of accelerants seemed to work perfectly. Sprinklers are for saving lives not saving money – in most instances if a sprinkler system goes off the costs from water damage wouldn’t be much different to the loses from fire.

The biggest financial impact may well be the business interruption for the arena. Which they may have insured or may not. Certainly there’ll be a loss of profit from the parking spaces, for the time it takes to knock it down, rebuild and restart the business.

Sprinkler heads only activate in areas of heat so limiting damage to other parts of the building.
I’ve only done a couple of systems but typically the water supply company won’t guarantee the water pressure available so you’ll need to provide a holding tank and pumps etc which for a car park like this would be rather big i’d imagine.

I work for a large insurer and sadly we already seen a few fraudulent claims, thank fully as far as we are aware the horseboxes and larger vehicles were not in this car park, they were in an external open air car park.

People are right though, whilst sprinkler may have stopped fire a bit quicker, most cars once they are water damaged are an instant write-off, as are the cars we have seen that were on top floor, whilst they were not burnt, they all have considerable smoke damage. It would be very difficult to prove any negligence against the vehicle that started the fire, so it is a case of insurers just bearing the losses and trying to deal with it all one best terms, we have been told the building is structurally unsound, so no chance of getting engineers in to inspect the vehicles. We have to rely on car park/ horse show entrance tickets to prove people were there really

i think their point was that it was unlikely they left a their expensive belongings in the vehicle and it was to bump up the insurance claim

I knew exactly their point.

In the end, this has happened once. All the cars in it are most likely insured and the building too. It’s not a Grenfell, stuff can be replaced.

This 100% One burnt out car might be an inconvenience 1,400 is just a statistic.

scud – Member
I work for a large insurer and sadly we already seen a few fraudulent claims, thank fully as far as we are aware the horseboxes and larger vehicles were not in this car park, they were in an external open air car park.

as i said yesterday

project – Member
Cycled past there yesterday afternoon, huge number of massive horse boxes, on the outside car parks which had their own private fire and safety vehicles patrolling the site incase of a fire, if just one of those had caught fire it would have been terrible trying to save the horses.It was the last day of the horse of the year show being put on at the arena.

Also multi storey car parks are always open at the sides to allow fumes and fire to escape, with protected stairwells at a few points, the car park also had steel bars floor to ceiling on some or all of the floors, to make it more secure, also car parks are built with drainage usually plastic drain pipes supported below the road decks, fuel would leak into these and burn through to the floor below, and also flow down the up ramps.

Water damage? Really?

I take it none of you take your car out in a decent downpour or through a carwash then? 😉

As said nobody died but how much would have been saved had there been an effective sprinkler system in place? What would have happened had everyone not got out in time?

Yes expensive to install but a pressurised system with standard quartz bulbs would do the job, we have them all over site and the whole system is supported by (when running) a single pump and air compressor for the hydrostatic tank (plus local compressors for the dry lines where needed).

As you say though it’s all a balancing act based on the likelihood of an incident this size happening.

As Harry says the problem will be 1400 cars where the payout will be less than most people will have to spend on a similar replacement 🙁

The city council now has control of the car park and is in the process of securing the site and removing loose material from the building. Hoardings are set to go up around the area this weekend.

According to the council, initial examinations show that due to the condition of the floors, it is doubtful the building can be saved. The assessment process is likely to take at least several weeks, but the building looks likely to be demolished.

will probably be demolished with all the cars there too as too dangerous to remove them, shame for the people who have cars on the top floor that are not damaged.

Sprinklers are for saving lives not saving money –

Are you German?

Sprinkler systems are installed for life and property preservation, and there are extensive codes for both installation reasons. If it’s required for life safety it’s mandatory (offices, hotels over a certain size etc)

There are loads of industrial premises that don’t require sprinklers from a life safety point of view, but which have them installed because the potential loss from a fire controlled by sprinklers is many times lower than an uncontrolled fire.

Risk management is all a balance of spend v outcome, and in a concrete building when you’re not responsible for the contents, it’s understandable for them not to sprinkler the whole thing. Don’t know what density and flow you’d need to put out a car fire either. Wouldn’t be a cheap system.

in most instances if a sprinkler system goes off the costs from water damage wouldn’t be much different to the loses from fire..

If a sprinkler system has been installed with no likelihood of reducing a loss of assets and profitability, it was a badly chosen system.

Could you use a tower crane to retrieve the top floor vehicles? assuming you’re lifting basically a car ramp plus the personnel to secure it (wouldn’t trust even the top floor to stand on), lift capacity of what? maybe 4 tonne max. How much does one of those cost to hire?

“We are still in the process of trying to make the site safe so that structural engineers can being the process of analysing the extent of the damage.

“Frankly, it’s likely that the car park will have to be demolished as the fabric of the building has been extensively damaged. To put this in perspective, one of the cars of the third floor has actually crashed through to the floor below.

“So it’s not safe yet even to enter the building and we cannot have anyone risking their lives trying to do so, especially with the strong winds we’re currently experiencing.

“We will do everything we can to try and recover any vehicles and possessions that are still viable, but everyone needs to understand that the car park was an inferno and the vast majority of cars were completely incinerated.

“We are dealing with a freak event and people who have worked in this field for a lifetime have never known anything like it.”

Even if you got your car back, would you ever get the smell of smoke out of it?

Could you use a tower crane to retrieve the top floor vehicles? assuming you’re lifting basically a car ramp plus the personnel to secure it (wouldn’t trust even the top floor to stand on), lift capacity of what? maybe 4 tonne max. How much does one of those cost to hire?

Most cranes that lift that high couldn’t lift 4t. At full reach that’s probably be under one tonne capacity. Probably cost more to hire than the cars are worth, considering they’re probably smoke and heat damaged anyway. I wouldn’t want mine back if it was up there.

Also, there’s some people on this thread taking themselves far to seriously. But it’s funny, so carry on. 🙂

Get one of these in! The downdraft may bring the rest of the car park down though!…

Most cranes that lift that high couldn’t lift 4t. At full reach that’s probably be under one tonne capacity.

There’s quite a few much, much larger mobile cranes in the UK I watched them lifting the Thames Cable Car tower sections back in 2012 – that was a 1350t crawler crane, it will reach 183m so a little mutli-storey car park shouldn’t pose a problem. There’s also the Liebherr LTM 11200 1200t crane which should manage it….
Rather than having sprinklers my understanding that water mist systems were preferred, certainly that was the reasoning for the installation of the same on the Dartford Crossing.

You would think the trailer would pivot up on the tow hitch unless measured very accurately. I am not saying Army Air cannot measure stuff , but that so looks like it should fail.
10T airframe and a 10T payload .-stripped (iirc), so could easily pick cars off the roof.

That 1350 tonne crane will only be rated at 1350 tonnes 12 metres away from the centre of the crane, as you jib out it’ll become substantially less. Of course you need space to get such a big crane on there as well.

so could easily pick cars off the roof.

Could.

But why bother? You’ve got to drop someone on the roof to attach the car to the helicopter, then you’ve got to drop it off somewhere without doing any damage. Imagine doing enough damage to the four panels above the wheels (from the straps, while attaching/carrying it) that they need replacing. There’s a lot of cars that would be written off by that.

And I doubt hiring a Chinook and a team of specialist recovery people willing to be lowered onto the roof of an unstable building would be cheap. And there’s half a chance that the cars have been damaged by the heat from below and are write-offs anyway.

Just seems a bit pointless. They’re only cars, they’re insured. Knock down the car park without putting anyone’s life at risk for the sake of a hatchback.

Seems to have been forgotten in liverpool now, no masses visiting the shrine as of yesterday, or it even be spoken of. Theyre only cars .

oh and insurance companies are using drones to check the cars as certain motorists are claiming for cars that where not actually in the fire or on the car park site.