Not entirely accurate.
They had the flames out in about 3 minutes, but the final extinguishing took 4 hours.
Tesla battery packs chain react when they catch fire, an issue that makes them extremely difficult to deal with.
What would happen when they first were dealt with was firefighters would put out the flames, think it was OK, only to have the car burst back into flames as the batteries heated back up.
So now they have learned that they have to saturate a Tesla until the batteries are cold enough that it kills the chain reaction, which takes hours and 10's of thousands of gallons of water.
A weekend car crash in The Woodlands involving a Tesla electric vehicle that exploded in...
www.houstonchronicle.com