Fire on a truck transporting hydrogen cylinders

A trailer-truck transporting hydrogen gas cylinders was involved in a collision on a highway, experienced a partial roll-over and cough fire. The online news do not report the origin of the fire. Anyhow, the cylinders were involved in the fire, and it is also reported that “…a couple of cylinders exploded”. It has not been possible to get an indipedent confirmation of this statement. However, from the picture provided it is possible to see that the rack protecting the cylinders was deformed and several cylinders were not anymore at their place.
The fire brigade personnel was able to extinguish the fire in few hours.
The incident occurred early in the morning and only the driver was slightly injured. It caused a traffic jam of few hours.

INITIATING cause was a traffic accident. In absence of information on drivers and driver behaviours, the ROOT CAUSE can be attributed generically to a human error (wrong maneuvre). However, a shortcoming in design cannot be excluded (nor confirmed), due to structural weaknesses of the rack.

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