Tesla semi-trailer caught fire and the road was closed for 15 hours, causing a loss of 50,000 people

Accidents happen every day, and they often involve semi-trucks and tractor-trailers. But last month, for the first time, a Tesla semi-truck crashed and burned. Now that the National Transportation Safety Board has a preliminary report on the cause of the accident, it’s hard to imagine how people put out the fire.

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Initially, it was clear that a fire had occurred in the accident, which destroyed the truck but left the driver uninjured. The truck was the only vehicle affected and the road was closed for several hours.

More: Fire at home destroys luxury car worth $500,000

The NTSB report said the accident occurred at 3:13 a.m. when the driver veered to the right side of the road and struck two objects. The first was a boundary marker on a steel post, and the second was a tree slightly over a foot in diameter. The truck then struck several other trees. The battery fire occurred after the accident, not before.

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But once the fire began, it took firefighters about 50,000 gallons of water and 14 to 15 hours to safely reopen the road. Thermal monitors showed a maximum temperature of about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 degrees Celsius).

To put these numbers into perspective, consider this: That much water could fill a tank that’s 8 feet tall and 33 feet in circumference. 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit is hot enough to melt aluminum and is about four times the temperature needed to cause a fourth-degree burn. So it’s no surprise that firefighters douse the area around a fire with fire retardant to prevent the fire from spreading.

It’s worth noting that we still don’t know some details. What caused the driver to veer off the road? Were there any external circumstances that led to the crash? What exactly damaged the battery and caused it to catch fire? The last thing the NTSB noted, though, was that the Tesla driver was not using any Autopilot system at the time of the crash. We’ll update you as we learn more.

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