Wind Turbine Fires Signal End of Land-Based Wind Turbines
Posted by Long Islander on April 5, 2018 at 7:48pm

Hanover, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Presque Isle, Maine have all seen dramatic wind turbine fires in the last few weeks.

The obvious challenge facing firefighters is the height involved if a fire occurs in the turbine motor.

Due to the risk of falling fire debris over a wide area, approaching a burning turbine …is usually not an option unless there is a life risk involved. If the turbine is turning, power is being generated and an electrocution hazard will be present.

Typically, a good option for firefighters to consider is to evacuate any endangered areas, set up a collapse zone, and attempt to control any ground fires to prevent the fire from spreading to other units.

In the case of a runaway or over-speed event, rotating turbines can throw debris thousands of feet away during a blade failure. Pieces of blades have been documented in California as traveling over 4,200 feet. Distance and time will fix this problem.

Pre-incident planning and Standard Operation Procedure development are keys to success for safely handling this unique danger.

Between 2005 and 2009 the news media and politicians touted commercial land-based wind turbines. Today your not going to read about the ongoing health, financial fiasco and now mechanical breakdowns resulting in massive fires. The blades can weigh up to seven tons each.

The residents who live near turbines in Falmouth, Massachusetts don’t have fires but have reported problems such as sleep disruption, headaches, vertigo, and nausea. Today residents world wide report the same conditions. The wind industry would have you believe these people world-wide all got together like Hollywood actors making up the same story worldwide for the last eight years ?

Proponents of wind energy admit the turbines do make noise regulatory measured in decibels and infrasound a low-frequency noise called a nuisance or human annoyance. In 2011 the Chief Executive Officer of Vestas wind company CEO Engel Ditlev wrote a letter to Karen Ellemann about low frequency noise. The CEO responded that Vestas does not have the technology to stop the noise. The Town of Falmouth owns two Vestas V-82 type 1.65 megawatt wind turbines that produce up to 110 decibels of chest pounding noise.

The Falmouth, Massachusetts local town Zoning Board of Appeals decided the wind turbines are a nuisance and in June of 2017 Barnstable Superior Court Judge Cornelius Moriarty issued the order to shut down Falmouth’s town-owned Wind 1 and Wind 2.

Here is the video of the most recent wind turbine fire in Presque Isle, Maine –April 1, 2018

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The University of Maine at Presque Isle Wind turbine on fire

Published on Apr 2, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfILqeE39EY