Ralph Suppa, Fire Captain & CEO of Cervitas Solutions deep dives into responding to EV, E-bike and lithium-ion battery fires
Those in the fire service hate two things: 1) The way things are and 2) Change. Lithium-ion batteries are forcing us to wrestle with both simultaneously.
Electric vehicles, battery energy storage systems (BESS), e-bikes, scooters and battery tools are now part of everyday life.
We’re seeing stubborn fires, toxic plumes and violent off-gassing from battery incidents that don’t resemble the “routine” incidents many of us grew up with.
Ralph Suppa
Nobody has it all figured out.
Thankfully, we don’t need perfection to move the needle.
We need honest risk recognition, a balance of science and street experience and enough humility to keep updating our playbook.
This is where safety and collaboration really come into focus.
A changing risk picture
On paper, lithium-ion incidents remain relatively small compared with the reported incidents worldwide.
Operationally, they punch above their weight.
An EV fire, or any other battery fire, is often a combined thermal and chemical event- distinct from a conventional fire.
Just as we, the fire service, changed our tactics, PPE and approach when synthetics replaced most conventional combustibles, we are at another crossroads.
We are seeing more battery-related runs and there’s every reason to expect that trend to continue.
Ralph Suppa
We have more than 20 years of use with lithium-ion batteries in laptops, tools and EVs.
Micromobility and DIY projects exacerbate the risk of incidents.
E-bikes and scooters are being charged in basements, stairwells, bedrooms and small shops.
Many people are using mismatched chargers or “Franken-packs.”
We’re also seeing home-built conversions of e-bikes, scooters and recreational vehicles using repurposed packs purchased online.
Many of these come from low-cost overseas suppliers whose quality control may not meet the standards of certified products.
When one of these fails in a living area or a garage beneath a sleeping area, a small problem can escalate into a fully developed, highly toxic fire within seconds.
The message is simple: the risk profile has changed.
Our mindset and tactics must change with it.
You don’t want to be the crew caught wearing ¾ boots and no SCBA on one of these incidents.
This is how you bury a dinosaur, and you’re going to be that dino if you don’t adapt.
Inside the battery: Why it behaves differently
We don’t all need to be battery chemists, but we do need a usable mental model.
A lithium-ion cell stores significant energy in a compact space.
Ralph Suppa
A thin separator keeps the anode and cathode apart while a flammable electrolyte carries ions.
If that separator fails due to crash damage, overheating, a manufacturing defect, or abuse, the cell can enter thermal runaway.
It generates heat faster than it can shed it.
That heat spreads to neighboring cells and cascades through the pack.
As the temperature climbs, the pack can vent a cloud of flammable and toxic gases.
Those clouds can look like harmless “steam,” but contain HF, CO, HCN, VOCs, and ultrafine particulates.
Clear air does not always mean clean air and white smoke does not guarantee safety. This is why treating these as “just another fire” is hubris and dangerous.
Making decisions: The OODA loop
Because these incidents evolve quickly, we need a decision-making model that can keep up. The OODA Loop: Observe, orient, decide, act, from John Boyd, gives us that.
Observe: Look for signs of battery involvement; undercarriage fires on EVs, deformed or smoking packs, popping or hissing, and/or “steam-like” off-gassing
Orient: Put the “observed” into context. Is this an EV, scooter, containerized BESS or a DIY battery build? Where is the pack relative to the fire? Where will gases go?
Decide: Is this a rescue-driven event, a suppression-driven event or a “protect and contain” situation? A “Protect and contain” situation refers to a controlled burn with exposure protection
Act: Commit to a plan for hose lines, monitoring gases, perimeters and PPE. Then loop back as conditions change
This is where balance matters.
We need both technical understanding and real-world experience.
Lab tests and white papers are critical, but they don’t replace what crews see in turnout gear at 3 a.m.
We get in trouble when we lean only on theories from a book or only on war stories from the field. We need both.
Where safety lives or dies: SCBA and perimeters
Across multiple incidents, these safety themes keep repeating.
SCBA discipline
Members have been exposed while standing “just outside” the obvious hazard area without respiratory protection as vapor clouds engulfed them.
There have been examples of this around the world, including Sacramento, CA and Maryland.
Members from these events are still off duty and dealing with significant health issues, ranging from decreased lung function, EKG changes and renal problems.
Ralph Suppa
There are reports of metallic taste, throat irritation and other symptoms without a visible flame.
The list of incidents and exposures is growing rapidly and we need to ensure we don’t create silos of information or fail to share lessons.
The simple rules are: treat any EV, e-bike or lithium-ion fire as an SCBA incident from the outset and stay on air through knockdown and overhaul until monitoring indicates otherwise.
Perimeters and gas behavior
Off -gassing products tend to hang low, travel with the wind and collect in basements, car parks and enclosures.
Pump operators, police, tow operators and bystanders can all be in danger if our hot zone is drawn too tightly.
In the Sacramento incident, firefighters who were exposed were 300 ft away from the EV that vented.
This shows that even the ERG isolation numbers need to be updated.
Perimeters should be generous and dynamic, not static lines painted on a map.
Batteries, BESS and the next big risk
BESS is where a lot of these issues converge.
These systems are increasingly tied to the explosive growth of data centers and other critical infrastructures. Many BESS are installed in enclosed containers.
Ralph Suppa
That raises tactical questions: Where do off-gas products actually go? How is explosion risk controlled? What happens when corrosion, water ingress, marine salt or seismic activity act on these systems over the years?
Current codes, such as NFPA 855 and the International Fire Code, require an explosion-control strategy for larger electrochemical ESS.
For us, it translates into simple pre-plan questions: How is this container controlling flammable gas prevention, venting or both? Where does the gas go? What happens if those systems lose power or fail?
Act on those questions, otherwise we risk a slow, systemic erosion of safety. Systemic erosion is what sets the stage for a Grenfell-type disaster in battery space.
Moving forward
Electrification is not a passing trend. EVs, e-bikes, DIY conversions and battery storage will only become more common and more deeply embedded in our environment.
We can choose to pretend these are the same as yesterday’s fires, or we can accept that they are different: different toxicity, different behaviour, different consequences.
We can invest in training that includes handling delayed re-ignition, off -gassing, monitoring and coordination across agencies.
We can put the OODA loop and clear tactical options into simple SOPs.
We can build partnerships with occupational health and environmental agencies, as well as industry, to understand exposures and engineer safer sites.
Ralph Suppa
If we don’t, the erosion of safety will be quiet and gradual right up until the day it isn’t.
If we do, we stand a real chance of keeping our people safer, protecting the public and making sure the next big battery story is one we prevented, not one we read about.
That, ultimately, is what it means to put safety at the forefront.
This article was originally published in the February issue of Fire & Safety Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital copy, click here.
