EV fires remain a wild west for first responders as NHTSA delays action – WLOS

The Biden administration is pushing to get more electric vehicles on the road, and sales are going up. Along with the surge in electric cars, there are concerns about how first responders should handle fire emergencies on the road. There are specific challenges with EVs and no universal guidelines for fighting those fires.

Bishal Mala believes he could have died on a highway in Sacramento last year.

His electric car started smoking, then exploded.

“My kids would have been orphaned, my wife would have been widowed, I would not be here right now,” Mala said. “That’s what strikes my mind.”

Firefighters quickly responded when his car went up in flames. The fight took hours, because while EV fires are not more common than fires in gas-fueled cars, lithium ion batteries in EVs pose new challenges. They burn slowly and can reignite even after the fires are out, often requiring extra surveillance and tons of water.

Mala’s story is being repeated across the country, raising an important question about whether there should be a uniform response for fire departments.

In Orange county, an EV fire spread to a garage. In Michigan, an electric car reignited in a tow yard after the fire was already out. And just outside Seattle, responders watched a vehicle re-ignite over 10 hours. In Alabama, 36,000 gallons of water was used to put out an EV fire.

With so many new electric cars hitting the road, each with different layouts, there is not a standard for fire departments on how to attack. Each model can have live wires and batteries in different locations, forcing first responders to tackle each one differently.

Some departments allow the fire to burn for hours, or use thousands of gallons of water to extinguish.

In Seattle, the Fire Department quickly looks through an emergency response guide, by make and model, to figure out a best angle of attack. In some cases, an app can be used to look up the schematics quickly. In other cases, first responders are required to read an emergency manual from the car’s maker online. Some of them are dozens of pages long with complicated guidelines. Right now, car makers are under no obligation to provide information in any streamlined format.

It’s why many responders flock to trainings, led by experts like Ron Moore, a former fire chief who’s made it his mission to help emergency departments prepare.

The Spotlight team was invited to a training in North Carolina, where Moore cut open a Tesla in order to give firefighters an inside look at the unique design.

Despite the well-known challenges, there is no magic solution.

“Vendors have come up with everything from $800 tools designed to extinguish the fire up to $40,000 extinguishing tools and every vendor promotes their tool as the best,” Moore said. “Right now, there is no clear winner.”

On a federal level, since our first report on this topic in 2021, there has been very little movement or coordination on EV firefighting strategies.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, said in a statement that it is “working on a rulemaking action to propose further safety improvements to EV battery management systems, including requiring vehicle manufacturers to provide additional information related to fire risks and mitigation to first and second responders.”

That rulemaking action was scheduled for summer of 2023, but to this day, nothing has been published.

In a recent Congressional hearing, lawmakers spoke about the need to fully understand the dangers and risks of high voltage lithium ion batteries in electric cars, but there has been no legislation introduced on the topic.

For now, fighting EV fires remains a wild west for those who are tasked with keeping everyone safe on road.

For Mala, the risk is too great to think about buying another EV.

He told the Spotlight team, “I would not even drive one.”