March 9, 2026

expert reaction to Glasgow fire

Scientists comment on a fire in Glasgow Central train station. 

Prof Paul Christensen, Professor Emeritus of Pure & Applied Electrochemistry, Newcastle University; and Director, Lithiumionsafety Ltd, said:

“Firstly, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service as always did a brilliant job – not least in saving the magnificent Glasgow Central Station.

“We do not know the cause of the fire but reports suggest it started in a vape shop and it is possible that lithium-ion batteries were involved and contributed to the scale of the destruction.

“I am not trying to demonise lithium-ion batteries – I am a BIG fan.  BUT they have penetrated all levels of society and, in my opinion, have done so faster than we have understood the risks and hazards.  (They are in power tools, drones, radio controlled planes and cars etc., electric cars, vans, HGVs and some trains, domestic battery energy storage systems, grid-scale battery energy storage systems, electric ships and ferries, ebikes, escooters, etc.)  There also appears to be a reluctance at Government level to accept the risks and hazards of these devices, much less to address them.

“Whether or not these batteries were the cause of the initial fire in this case, we need to have lithium-ion battery-specific risk assessments for any building with appreciable stored energy density – either large lithium-ion batteries or lots of small lithium-ion batteries – we are seeing fires and even explosions onboard container ships due large numbers of small lithium-ion batteries.  Reasons for lithium-ion batteries sometimes catching fire include: typically because they are crushed (e.g. in recycling facilities and bin lorries), heated, overcharged or have defects introduced at manufacturing stage.

“The probability of failure is low, but the attendant consequences can be extreme as we can see!  Thankfully, no-one was injured or killed.  But this is not always the case – we have seen a number of house fires caused by escooter and ebikes, and some of those previous cases have resulted in fatalities.”

Prof Guillermo Rein, Professor of Fire Science and Director of Research, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, said:

“I am saddened to see the loss caused by the fire near Glasgow Central Station.  The destruction of a historic Victorian building, together with the disruption and uncertainty imposed on Glasgow, is a major blow to a city and a nation I know well and admire deeply.  I lived in Scotland for six years and I have enormous affection for the land and its people.

“I have one remark and one concern to highlight.

“My remark is this that the loss of a multi-storey building from a fire that appears to have started in a small commercial premise represents an extensive failure of fire safety in such building.  Such an outcome points to failures across multiple layers of protection, including prevention, early detection, compartmentation, suppression, and structural resistance.  The one success, thankfully, appears to be evacuation, because there are no reported casualties so far.  The contributing factors should not be reduced to the ignition source or to the actions of a few individuals.  This points at an extensive and multi-layered failure involving many safeguards that did not hold.

“My concern is about the possible role of the many Lithium-ion batteries reportedly stored in the shop where the fire began on Sunday.  That must now be examined carefully by the investigation.  If batteries were materially involved, this may not have been a conventional shop fire.  Lithium-ion battery fires tend to be unusually resistant to suppression, because they are designed to be protected from water, but generate intense heat, reignite, and in large numbers can result fire conditions that are difficult to bring under control.  That could help explain why even a highly trained and well-equipped force like the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service faced such difficulty in suppressing the initial fire.”

Declared interests

Prof Paul Christensen: “Director, Lithiumionsafety Ltd.”

Prof Guillermo Rein: “No conflict of interest