… As of this past Tuesday, CalFire was still pouring water on and into the building while coming to the realization that “water” around lithium-ion batteries was a double-edged sword. Like Ramius tells Ryan in Red October, “Most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.” In the batteries’ case, they don’t react well to water.

…Pascua said things began to reignite Friday night.

“You have to put water on it to keep the fire confined, but that water damages the batteries also allowing them to arc starting another fire. We’re just trying to keep the public safe and keep the fire contained to the building,” he said.

The chain reaction can happen when a lithium-ion battery creates heat faster than it can dissipate. That rapid increase of temperature can then turn to fire.

But water’s all they’ve got, and, as of yesterday, they were well into multiple millions of gallons flowing without having put the fire to bed.

San Diego Firefighters have flown in experts to the Otay Mesa Battery Storage site to study the fire because they don’t know how to extinguish it. The ? has already consumed 5 million gallons of water, and firefighters estimate it will take an additional 7-10 days to control,… pic.twitter.com/sVi71XW1Vy

— Amy Reichert (@amyforsandiego) May 23, 2024

One fire. In a perpetual drought state.

…The fire has already consumed 5 million gallons of water, and firefighters estimate it will take an additional 7-10 days to control, using a total of 15-20 million gallons. LETHAL amounts of Hydrogen Cyanide were present in the air for 3 hours after the fire began…

All that and, as of this morning, still en fuego. ….