One reporter called it a "toxic lava lamp" IIRC. Yeah she mentions the smoke is drifting northeast, that's us, but some distance away. Our Shiba had a sneezing fit when we stepped out this morning, he's got a sensitive sniffer. Kind of like forest fire haze, once or twice though we noticed an odd, chemically smell in the air.
Never occurred to me before how important it would be to remove fuel from vehicles before crushing them. But that must be routine, right? Many flammable components remain, and this time they got ignited. Seeing cars burn (individually) it is striking that a little river of aluminum flows away before cooling. On this barge, somewhere below decks a big blob of that will eventually be found.
... plus engine oil, transmission fluid/oil, differential oil, brake fluid, power steering fluid, ...
The fluids are all drained from a scrapped car, but there is still going to be a fair amount of oil film in the crankcase and transmission. Not to mention the lifetime of grease that builds up in the engine bay. Then there are plenty of other fuel sources in the form of all the plastics, electronics, and tires. If old enough, some cars can contain flammable metals. My guess is this started as an electrical short.
