Fire departments struggle with battery fires in electric cars
Jazz Shaw Jun 21, 2021 2:31 PM ET
We have been lectured repeatedly about how electric vehicles are the way of the future and will be required to save the planet. Funding for recharging stations and related equipement was included in the Democrats’ infrastructure bill, assuming it ever even comes up for a vote. The state of California is so confident that electric cars will solve all of our problems that they are banning the construction of new gas stations in a few years.
But all is not well in electric car land. The nation’s firefighters are now banding together in an attempt to develop training for how to handle the resultant fire when one of these Teslas or other electric cars gets into a high-speed crash and bursts into flames. The problem is that despite not having a tank full of gasoline, electric cars burn longer and more fiercely than automobiles with internal combustion engines. That leads to significant challenges and dangers for first responders. One of them who was interviewed for a report on the subject from NBC news described the cars as being like on of those trick birthday candles that you can never blow out.
It’s the kind of blaze that veteran Chief Palmer Buck of The Woodlands Township Fire Department in suburban Houston compared to “a trick birthday candle.”
On April 17, when firefighters responded to a 911 call at around 9:30 p.m., they came upon a Tesla Model S that had crashed, killing two people, and was now on fire. They extinguished it, but then a small flare shot out of the bottom of the charred hulk. Firefighters quickly put out those flames. Not long after, the car reignited for a third time.
“What the heck? How do we make this stop?’” Buck asked his team.
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https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/06/21/fire-departments-struggle-with-battery-fires-in-electric-cars-n398026
