Patong fire damage estimated at B60mn

[rooster59]

Patong fire damage estimated at B60mn

By Eakkapop Thongtub

 

The fire gutted nine buildings and caused about B60 million in damage. photo: Eakkapop Thongtub
 

PHUKET: The fire that broke out on the Patong beach road last night gutted nine four-storey units and caused about B60 million in damage, police have estimated.

 

No deaths or injuries were reported from the fire, though many people evacuated from the scene were treated for smoke inhalation, The Phuket News was told.

 

The fire broke out just after 8pm after an electrical transformer blew out, showering a souvenir shop with sparks and setting the building on fire, reported Patong Police Chief Col Anotai Jindamanee.

Full story: https://www.thephuketnews.com/patong-fire-damage-estimated-at-b60mn-71096.php#iZW1xMq7P8JqmcAX.97

 

-- © Copyright Phuket News 2019-04-14

 

 

 

[toenail]

There are a lot of electric transformer “blow-ups”. (Many in Pattaya) I am not an electrician so I am curious what causes these transformers to catch on fire??? ( overload?)

[Oziex1]

31 minutes ago, toenail said:

There are a lot of electric transformer “blow-ups”. (Many in Pattaya) I am not an electrician so I am curious what causes these transformers to catch on fire??? ( overload?)

If by the beach possibly a build up of salt causing arcing,  any electricians care to comment.

I was standing near one at Karon beach markets when it blew a cable off scary stuff. 

[xylophone]

6 hours ago, Oziex1 said:

If by the beach possibly a build up of salt causing arcing,  any electricians care to comment.

I was standing near one at Karon beach markets when it blew a cable off scary stuff. 

I have worked on overhead lines and transformers in my previous life and have never seen so many explosions as I have seen here in my last 12 years.

 

And there are a combination of factors that are possible...........dirty insulators and possible cracking of them; pole fuses which are loose and which overheat, along with pole fuses being overloaded and then of course there is the actual transformer itself which can suffer, although it would take one hell of a lot to blow one of those apart.

 

All of the above can be coated in dirt and as Oziex1 has stated, possibly salt, and because the voltage is very high, it starts to "creep" along anywhere which has a coating of dirt or similar and can cause arcing between different phases or even arcing between insulators and the brackets and so on.

 

What is not in question is the fact that I have never seen any of these "installations" being cleaned since I've been here, and this was part of a planned maintenance schedule when I worked overseas, especially as it was in the desert and the dust created havoc, and having said that, here we have had dirty air and much dust from building and construction, so only to be expected. 

 

Of course some planned maintenance might help...............perish the thought!. 

[ChasingTheSun]

60m bt damage for that dump? No chance.

 

more like 20m bt to tear down and rebuild something decent.

Edited April 15, 2019 by ChasingTheSun

[stevenl]

1 hour ago, ChasingTheSun said:

60m bt damage for that dump? No chance.

 

more like 20m bt to tear down and rebuild something decent.

The fire gutted 9 4-story units. How many 4-story units do you see in the photo you're commenting on?

[ChasingTheSun]

1 hour ago, stevenl said:

The fire gutted 9 4-story units. How many 4-story units do you see in the photo you're commenting on?

Its an old roach infested dump. 

 

Around 20million max to replace with new.

[stevenl]

11 minutes ago, ChasingTheSun said:

Its an old roach infested dump. 

 

Around 20million max to replace with new.

I notice you're not answering the question, and think you can estimate the damage based on a photo of only a part of the damaged buildings. ????

[ChasingTheSun]

11 minutes ago, stevenl said:

I notice you're not answering the question, and think you can estimate the damage based on a photo of only a part of the damaged buildings. ????

It appears to one building comprising multiple units.

 

 If there are other buildings then the costs will indeed rise.

[LivinginKata]

Just now, ChasingTheSun said:

It appears to one building comprising multiple units.

 

 If there are other buildings then the costs will indeed rise.

 Plus the (inflated) stock value ...

[DrDave]

The story from the link says 9 buildings were destroyed, but I think its actually 9 units in a single building. There are 3 separate buildings along this side of the pedestrian soi, and it looks like only the building fronting the beach road caught fire.

[Snow Leopard]

36 minutes ago, LivinginKata said:

 Plus the (inflated) stock value ...

Exactly. A Jewish stock take. 

[stevenl]

47 minutes ago, ChasingTheSun said:

It appears to one building comprising multiple units.

 

 If there are other buildings then the costs will indeed rise.

Which is what the op stated, multiple buildings. Now whether that is correct?

Edited April 15, 2019 by stevenl

[ChasingTheSun]

36 minutes ago, DrDave said:

The story from the link says 9 buildings were destroyed, but I think its actually 9 units in a single building. There are 3 separate buildings along this side of the pedestrian soi, and it looks like only the building fronting the beach road caught fire.

 

Indeed.

 

The picture only shows one building, with what are likely nine units in that one building.

 

If it was only the one building, then they should be able to put up a replacement thai-style building for around 20million baht. 

[Inn Between]

On 4/14/2019 at 7:23 AM, xylophone said:

I have worked on overhead lines and transformers in my previous life and have never seen so many explosions as I have seen here in my last 12 years.

 

And there are a combination of factors that are possible...........dirty insulators and possible cracking of them; pole fuses which are loose and which overheat, along with pole fuses being overloaded and then of course there is the actual transformer itself which can suffer, although it would take one hell of a lot to blow one of those apart.

 

All of the above can be coated in dirt and as Oziex1 has stated, possibly salt, and because the voltage is very high, it starts to "creep" along anywhere which has a coating of dirt or similar and can cause arcing between different phases or even arcing between insulators and the brackets and so on.

 

What is not in question is the fact that I have never seen any of these "installations" being cleaned since I've been here, and this was part of a planned maintenance schedule when I worked overseas, especially as it was in the desert and the dust created havoc, and having said that, here we have had dirty air and much dust from building and construction, so only to be expected. 

 

Of course some planned maintenance might help...............perish the thought!. 

It's always interesting to learn more about the common things around us that we take for granted, and I can certainly understand the idea of dirty and possibly salt coating these components to create arcing and therefore fire hazards.

 

But I had to wonder about the role of rainwater. Thailand gets prolonged periods of heavy hard-driving rain, and I would have thought that it would be effective in naturally keeping these types of things fairly clean. The other question about rain is that we know water is a pretty good conductor of electricity, so why doesn't the same type of arcing happen when these components are soaking wet from the rain? 

 

I'm not questioning or challenging the explanation kindly offered -- just curious about those rain questions. 

[donim]

1 hour ago, stevenl said:

Which is what the op stated, multiple buildings. Now whether that is correct?

Analyze the article, the following lines are found.

 

1. souvenir goods, many of them leather items, housed on the second floor.
2. Six teams of firefighters arrived fought the flames from multiple sides to contain the blaze, but found their efforts hampered by the breeze and the flammable materials in the buildings
3. In total, nine shophouse units gutted or heavily damaged from the fire and the thick black smoke it created.
4. Among the units affected by the fire were shops, restaurants and small hotels where tourists were staying.
5. Four Storey

So, it is one² building that consist of smaller buildings, better said, units. In total 4 layers⁵, for some cultures it goes to the third floor and other to the fourth. (1-4 and 'BG/F/L'-3)

Not known is the situation on the rooftop, which mostly is used too.

Four floors, with the souvenir goods on the second¹ floor, the fire started here which would be plausible as that is the level of transformers.

Not sure about the nine, lets assume that is just only the shophouse/units with shops³ and more units that are noted as one of the 'buildings' like the restaurants⁴ and small hotels⁴

 

I would say it is one big building with several units, used as small hotels, restaurants and nine small shops.

[donim]

26 minutes ago, donim said:

I would say it is one big building with several units, used as small hotels, restaurants and nine small shops.

If I look at the picture, the one big building is constructed from two different builts fused together in a later stadia.

Perhaps in the history one building was built and then later the second one. And one of these were split unit which again has fused by removing the inside walls.

This happens a lot with renovated buildings and new destination plans.

 

Interessting, me dunkt.

[xylophone]

13 hours ago, Inn Between said:

It's always interesting to learn more about the common things around us that we take for granted, and I can certainly understand the idea of dirty and possibly salt coating these components to create arcing and therefore fire hazards.

 

But I had to wonder about the role of rainwater. Thailand gets prolonged periods of heavy hard-driving rain, and I would have thought that it would be effective in naturally keeping these types of things fairly clean. The other question about rain is that we know water is a pretty good conductor of electricity, so why doesn't the same type of arcing happen when these components are soaking wet from the rain? 

 

I'm not questioning or challenging the explanation kindly offered -- just curious about those rain questions. 

You raise some very interesting points which I will attempt to answer............

 

Firstly, some of these installations can be affected by heavy driving rain and explosions can happen in these conditions. 

 

Also a lot of the time it's because this rain dampens an existing layer of dirt which is almost crusted on because of the dust and humidity here, so it's not easily washed off and can become a form of conductor when this happens, hence the explosions and this is particularly relevant on the insulators which are a bit of a "magnet" for this encrusted dirt.

 

Just as importantly is the condition of the pole fuses and believe it or not these are only hooked in place and basically resting on the top cradle of the conductor so are very prone to dirt and dust and poor surface contact, which in turn leads to overheating, and I would bet that if you walked along some of these overhead lines and looked carefully at the pole fuses, you could see slight arcing at the point of contact, and it is an extremely common occurrence and I see it often here.

 

Then of course there is the added "load" which is put on these installations when more and more buildings are going up, guesthouses etc and their electricity supply comes from the existing transformer and associated gear, which can put more load on them than they were initially designed for.

 

Finally, a transformer itself can fail although it's not that common for one to explode but it is possible, especially if they are very old, although there are mechanisms built into these transformers to stop that happening, like the "expansion tank" (actually called a conservator tank) which you often see sitting atop of them which allows the oil and air inside the transformer to expand, and breather mechanisms.

 

There are also of course the occasions when the overhead lines themselves can overheat through a poor/loose connection and simply explode and fall to the ground, which is extremely dangerous.

 

Anyway I digress, and I would suggest that the majority of the brownouts here are due to exploding pole fuses, dirty and loose connections and overloading over a period of time.

 

Best I can do Inn Between at this moment in time as it's been some 45 to 50 years since I was working on these things!!

 

One last thing to consider is the fact that these overhead lines we see are probably in the region of 11,000 V upwards (not sure what the Thailand transmission voltage for overhead lines is) and quite possibly up to 32,000 V whereas the big beasts are well upwards of that, so you can see the huge range, and strangely enough it's mainly the stuff which is closer to the ground and feeds our buildings which have the problems and those are which I've already mentioned.

 

And as a rider, water is actually a poor conductor of electricity, it's the other aspects I mentioned which usually cause the power cuts.

Edited April 16, 2019 by xylophone

[DrDave]

23 hours ago, donim said:

If I look at the picture, the one big building is constructed from two different builts fused together in a later stadia.

Perhaps in the history one building was built and then later the second one. And one of these were split unit which again has fused by removing the inside walls.

This happens a lot with renovated buildings and new destination plans.

 

Interessting, me dunkt.

At one time, the majority of that building contained a small guesthouse. Don't recall the name, but it included the word "boutique", and has since changed. It's difficult to see the actual configuration due to souvenir vendors setting up stands on three sides of this building. I don't recall if this building was later joined to the one next to it, but at one time, there was a small walkway between the guesthouse building, and the next building which housed the mini-mart (formerly known as "Big 1"). The building containing the mini-mart also has Harry's restaurant and guesthouse and a few other businesses, but I don't know if this building was joined to the building fronting the beach road. There's a third building further back in this row that's definitely detached from the others and separated by a fairly wide walkway.

I moved out of Patong a couple of years ago, but maybe someone who lives there currently has more info about the current configuration. It's a very popular area, being on the pedestrian mall in front of Patong Tower.