(A demo Chevy Bolt at Seattle Fire’s electric vehicle fire & rescue training shows orange casings for everything high-voltage)
Firefighters from state agencies and local departments as far away as Yakima, Clark County and even Salem, Oregon, came to our area to learn how to tackle fires in electric vehicles.
GM is conducting this free training with Seattle Fire to help crews stay safe with what’s still new and different automotive tech, which has a lot more juice flowing through it. GM’s Joe McClaine says the approaches to an EV fire or even a crash aren’t that much different, but they have some suggestions, like just letting it burn if there’s no risk of the fire spreading because that can ensure the batteries are all burned out and don’t risk reigniting, which makes the cars safer to handle by the tow truck and the salvage yard long after the fire. McClain says they do need crews to know where not to cut, especially when they need to pull someone out of a smashed car, since the batteries and cabling connecting them are in different places than they are on a gas-powered vehicle. “The color orange will identify the high-voltage cabling, the high-voltage components,” McClaine says, “We don’t want anyone to pull on, try to cut, pry, pull, poke, and those are going to be in locations that aren’t traditionally accessed.” Still, McLaine says for an extrication, a firefighter can still cut very close to where they would have before in order to get to people inside an EV – as long as they are careful not to cut where they could cause themselves a serious shock. McLaine says they are also pushing for a national standard on the safety specs to give firefighters a clear picture.
Seattle Fire Captain, Chris Greene, who runs the world’s only electric firefighting unit, says they actually need about 4 times the water to douse an EV fire, but they’re pretty well protected from shock. If you’ve ever put your wet cell phone in a bag of rice hoping to salvage it, that seems counterproductive, but those batteries get extremely hot in a fire, so water can help cool them down. Greene says worry about water causing a lithium explosion, which it can do when larger quantities are mixed, isn’t a concern with these lithium ion batteries. Greene tells Northwest Newsradio, “The amount of lithium that’s actually in a lithium ion battery is akin to dust. It’s very, very little, and so the operative agent to use to suppress these fires is water.”
Greene also says there are a lot of misconceptions about EVs and when they catch on fire, which he says are easy to find but which he says now need to be unwound because they want firefighters to be confident in their technique so that EV fires are handled properly.
