Samsung Factory Fire Caused By Faulty Batteries (theguardian.com) 71
A fire that drew out 110 firefighters and 19 trucks to a factory operated by Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery supplier, Samsung SDI, was caused by discarded faulty batteries, the company has said. From a report: A "minor fire" broke out Wednesday in a Samsung SDI plant in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin and had to be extinguished, according to local emergency services. The fire was contained to a part of the site used for waste processing, including faulty batteries. There were no casualties or significant impact on the operations of the plant, although the local fire department was called, said a Samsung SDI spokesperson. The Wuqing branch of the Tianjin fire department said on Sina Weibo that the "material that caught fire was lithium batteries inside the production workshops and some half-finished products."
Yo dawg (Score:5, Funny)
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Are Samsung engineers just bad at battery design, or was there something more in play here?
I am betting on insurance fraud...
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The politically-incorrect term for that is Jewish Fire Sale.
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Somehow, this reminds me of that time that someone fed industrial spies fake capacitor formulas leading to that epidemic of bad capacitors some years back.
Are Samsung engineers just bad at battery design, or was there something more in play here?
I remember dealing with this issue, it got heavy around 2000 and stayed alive for as long as I worked in PC repair. You had to check everything, video card, MoBo, PSU, and any other component with caps on it. I understood it to be a good job of industrial espionage followed by a bad job of industrial espionage... a copy and paste error was the explanation I heard at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Implications_of_industrial_espionage [wikipedia.org]
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Are Samsung engineers just bad at battery design, or was there something more in play here?
It's in Tianjin. You may recall last fall a couple of warehouses exploded and killed 100 or so and injured who knows how many. Cause: inadequate material handling and storage. Apparently that just means the payments to safety inspectors went up.
Re: Yo dawg (Score:1)
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So you can explode Note 7 while you explode Note 7.
Dell engineers relieved. (Score:3)
Discarded Headphone Jacks (Score:3)
I guess you can't start a fire from disposing of Headphone jacks incorrectly.
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What about headphones with batteries?
New Flash - giant hole appears in China (Score:1)
Giant fire that can't be put out bores hole through earth to Pacific ocean. China fills with water.
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Joke? No. They actually do it using child labor.
We need to build a wall under America to stop the Chinese from sneaking into the US that way.
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Could be. The antipode of Tianjin is in Buenos Aires, Argentina...
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Well, I don't know. But Americans say they can dig a hole to China. So I guess I should have worded it as "hole appears in America" --- but I know that digging through the USA won't get you to China (unless you go very sideways).
Or it appears in DC and swallows up everything - setting fire to the President's lying pants :-P (liar liar pants on fire)
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So you can dig that deep and instead of a volcanic eruption, water falls into a giant empty hole? I'm not buying that.
Re:New Flash - giant hole appears in China (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting that it's solid, not liquid, iron because of the pressure, even though it's ~5000F.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Hashtag Irony (Score:2)
Karma (Score:1)
Can there be anything more Funny? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Can there be anything more Funny? (Score:3)
Methinks that Samsung. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . .may have a new product line in the offing: Note7 Incendiary Grenades. MUCH better than Aperture Science Incendiary Lemons.
And 110 firefighters and 19 trucks is a **MINOR** fire ??
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I'm a firefighter, but not a firefighter where there factory is, so I don't know their SOGs. A small fire in an apartment building in an average city standing at first alarm will get one or two engines plus a ladder truck, each with a crew of 5 or perhaps 6 depending on the truck seating configuration. Each level of alarm after that will add two or three trucks, depending on command call for assistance. I can't imagine an SOG that would call for 19 trucks for less than 5 alarms, even at a hazardous site
Re: Methinks that Samsung. . . (Score:2)
but not a firefighter where there factory is...
If you were a firefighter in China, you wouldn't know how to spell "there" incorrectly. ;)
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And 110 firefighters and 19 trucks is a **MINOR** fire ??
That was actually my first thought -- but if it really IS a minor fire, then (a) they're bored, and (b) it gives them a valid excuse to get out (c) and socialize and (d) watch two guys actually put out a fire.
Man in Tree (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's one of several things going on here. A fire at the Samsung factory is *interesting*, so more first responders show up. Seattle had a man climb a tree downtown and they had dozens of people involved--but it's a guy in a tree occasionally throwing pine cones. People showed up because it was a diversion, not because they needed more people.
Second, responses to commercial properties tend to be somewhat faster and definitely more staffed than responses to individual homes. The potential for massive damage to inventory or danger to the public is usually significantly greater (especially in retail spaces). Something big like a Samsung factory might also bring substantial money into an area, and losing factories has a ripple effect in a community.
Third, if you hear you have a potential chemical fire at a factory and you don't know how big it is yet, you WANT to err on the side of caution and have all of the capability there that you need, and then some.
Fourth, if you had a Samsung factory in your country, mightn't you want to use it for espionage?
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. . .may have a new product line in the offing: Note7 Incendiary Grenades.
Too late, someone has already thought of that. [youtube.com]
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And 110 firefighters and 19 trucks is a **MINOR** fire ??
Quite possibly. The strength of the response is often related to the possibility of escalation not the actual size of the fire. If you're a facility handling hazardous chemicals then the response is huge even if a smoke detector is simply set off by a cigarette. I remember a refinery I worked at, 12 firetrucks showed up one evening. No fire, just a wet-gas compressor tripping due to a faulty flow transmitter resulting in excessive flaring. But people over the hill saw the glow in the sky and assumed there w
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Well, a fire at a lithium battery factory may be one of those things that has the potential to escalate faster than you as an incident commander can escalate your response.
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I would thing a wee bit of paranoia is justified at the TJ fire service
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tianjin-explosion-photos-china-chemical-factory-accident-crater-revealed-a7199591.html [independent.co.uk]
will the shipments have armored trucks as isis or (Score:2)
will the shipments have armored trucks as isis or others may want some old note 7's.
Obligatory xkcd quote (Score:2)
Re: Obligatory xkcd quote (Score:2, Funny)
Just what we need, smoke alarms powered by Samsung batteries.
Which factory is this? (Score:2)
Samsung is a company on fire (Score:2)
makes you wonder (Score:2)
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Didn't Samsung send out fire resistant packaging to put the defective devices into prior to shipping?
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Somebody took it literally
Industrial espionage/sabotage? (Score:3)
You're a smartphone manufacturer who wants to unseat Samsung.
All you gotta do is capitalize on the PR fiasco surrounding the Note 7.
Just slip a guy into the factory who sets off a fire.
Now you've just magnified the Note 7 fiasco into a... firestorm... and Samsung loses a huge amount of mindshare and thus markshare.
For a very low cost you gain some room to grow.
I expect some Chinese phone maker to suddenly start launching cool products and eating Samsung's lunch.
Tomorrow's headline (Score:1)
Fire At Landfill Used To Dispose Of Faulty Samsung Batteries
Real problem with Note 7? (Score:2)
Samsung suggested that one of the problems with the phone was that they did not leave enough space in the phone for the batteries to expand. So, what happened here? I doubt that Samsung was disposing of the phones with the batteries.
Hmmmm....