LYNN — As electric vehicles occupy more road space each year, the Lynn Fire Department is preparing to fight a whole new kind of fire — one that can cause uncontrollable heat fluctuations, can shock and severely injure first responders, and require 32 times more water to extinguish than a standard gas fire: lithium ion battery fires.
A study from the U.S. Energy Information Association found that, as of 2021, electric, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid cars comprised 10 percent of all car sales in the country. While more Americans each year consider going electric with their next car purchase, first responders are rushing to prepare for a future of extremely hot, self-perpetuating battery fires.
District Fire Chief Joseph Zukas said that although this year Lynn fire only saw one lithium ion battery fire, an electric scooter, the department is in communication with fire departments in New York and Florida to learn more about how to extinguish combusted lithium ion batteries.
“These lithium ion batteries are in cell phones, they’re now in the E bikes, they’re in cars, a lot of people have solar panels on our roof and they’re getting a Tesla battery pack for the garage,” Zukas said. “We’re just doing more research on that now to see what’s the best way to handle that in the future, because it looks like there’s going to be more and more of these vehicles on the road.”
Zukas cited an incident in Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in which an electric vehicle that had been underwater for days caught fire seemingly spontaneously. He said that compared to a traditional car fire, which can typically be extinguished with the water on a standard fire truck, electric car fires require significantly more water to put out.
“There’s been some instances where these cars that were underwater, especially in the saltwater, a few days later are bursting into flames and they’re very difficult to extinguish. It takes a lot of water and it takes a long time to put them out as compared to a regular vehicle fire,” Zukas said. “There was one fire department, where it took 23,000 gallons of water for them to put out an electric car fire, which we could probably put out with 700 gallons of water traditionally, or the water on a typical fire truck.”
A 2020 report from the National Transportation Safety Board found that the two primary risks to first responders putting out electric vehicle fires. One particular risk is thermal runaway, an exothermic reaction in which the heat of burning battery cells increases the rate of reaction, causing more battery cells to burn hotter in a domino effect that releases a plethora of toxic chemicals into the air.
“If a high-voltage battery is damaged, energy remains inside any undamaged battery modules and cells, with no path to discharge it. That stranded energy can cause a high-voltage battery to reignite multiple times after firefighters extinguish an electric vehicle fire. Emergency responders have no way of measuring how much energy remains in a damaged battery, and no way of draining that energy, other than such time-consuming methods as allowing
a battery fire to burn itself out,” the report stated.
Another risk to first responders extinguishing a burning electric vehicle is that of electric shock. The standard electric car battery pack, the report states, can carry up to 10 times the electric current capable of killing an adult human.
Zukas stressed that even though the fire department has been fortunate enough not to have encountered many severe lithium ion battery fires, they are doing what they can to remain ahead of the curve.
“As more and more of these cars get on the road, there’s always a potential that this could happen,” Zukas said. “I think a lot of fire departments around the country are in the same boat as we are. They’re all trying to get ahead of this and come up with something to be proactive instead of reactive.”
