This Is Not Your Father's Car Fire
The first time you watch a lithium-ion battery go into thermal runaway, it rewrites everything you thought you knew about vehicle fires. The thing feeds itself. It generates its own heat, its own fuel, and its own oxygen. Your normal playbook—cool it, cut the fuel supply, smother it—doesn't apply the same way.
We're not talking about the future here. We're talking about right now. EVs are on our roads today. E-bikes and e-scooters are in people's kitchens and living rooms tonight. And the fire service is still figuring this out as we go.
That's not a knock on anyone. The technology is evolving faster than our tactics. But if your department hasn't started training on lithium-ion battery fires, you're already behind. Across the country, first responders are turning to specialized training programs to close the knowledge gap.
Understanding Thermal Runaway
Here's the core problem. A lithium-ion battery cell contains its own oxidizer. When a cell goes into thermal runaway—triggered by damage, overcharging, manufacturing defect, or external heat—it enters a self-sustaining exothermic reaction. The cell vents flammable gases, ignites, and heats adjacent cells past their failure threshold. Cell-to-cell propagation can cascade through an entire battery pack.
The gases produced during thermal runaway include lithium oxide, lithium hydroxide, and hydrogen fluoride. That last one deserves your full attention. Hydrogen fluoride is acutely toxic. Exposure to skin or inhalation can cause severe burns, pulmonary edema, and systemic fluoride poisoning. Full SCBA is non-negotiable on any lithium-ion fire, even if it looks like a small event.
Temperatures inside a battery pack during thermal runaway can exceed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The reaction can reignite hours or even days after apparent extinguishment. We've all heard the stories of EVs re-igniting on the tow truck, in the impound lot, at the salvage yard. Those stories are real.
What Doesn't Work
Let's be direct about this: there is no universal suppression solution for lithium-ion battery fires. The fire service, manufacturers, and research institutions are all still working toward reliable, repeatable tactics. Here's what we know doesn't work well:
- Smothering alone: The battery generates its own oxygen through chemical decomposition. Cutting off external air doesn't stop the reaction.
- Dry chemical agents: Standard ABC extinguishers may suppress open flame temporarily but don't address the thermal energy inside the pack. Reignition is virtually guaranteed.
- Inadequate water volume: Small-volume suppression efforts won't cool the pack below its thermal runaway threshold. When water is the tactic, you need a lot of it—thousands of gallons in some documented EV fires.
What does work is sustained cooling with water. Large volumes. Continuous application. Direct penetration into the battery pack if possible. Some agencies have had success with total submersion in portable tanks, though that's logistically challenging on a roadway.
Tools That Are Changing the Game
The equipment side of this problem is evolving rapidly. As Firehouse Magazine's overview of EV fire mitigation details, several products are gaining traction in the fire service:
Bridgehill Fire Blankets
These high-temperature fire blankets are designed to contain an EV fire and limit fire spread to adjacent vehicles or structures. They don't extinguish the battery fire—they contain it. The blanket covers the vehicle, limits radiant heat exposure, and buys time while the battery burns through its available energy. Think of it as a portable exposure protection tool.
Turtle Fire Systems Dome Nozzles
The Turtle system uses a low-profile piercing nozzle positioned under the vehicle to deliver water directly into the battery pack from below. This addresses one of the core tactical challenges: getting water onto the cells that are in thermal runaway, not just the exterior of the vehicle. The dome shape distributes water across the undercarriage and battery housing.
Ziamatic Vehicle Cooling Unit
Ziamatic's approach focuses on sustained cooling. The unit attaches to the vehicle's undercarriage and provides continuous water application to the battery pack over an extended period. This is particularly useful for the post-suppression monitoring phase, freeing up crews and apparatus from babysitting a vehicle that might reignite.
EV Rescue App
Not a suppression tool, but arguably just as important. The EV Rescue App provides on-scene response guides for specific EV makes and models. It shows you where the battery is located, where the high-voltage cables run, where to cut and where not to cut. When you're standing in front of a wrecked vehicle you've never seen before, this information is critical for crew safety.
The E-Bike and E-Scooter Problem
If EV car fires are the headline, e-bike and e-scooter fires are the daily reality. These devices are proliferating in homes, apartments, and businesses. Their battery packs are often charged overnight, sometimes with aftermarket or incompatible chargers. Some use low-quality cells from manufacturers with minimal quality control.
When an e-bike battery goes into thermal runaway inside a residence, the occupants have very little time. The fire is fast, produces toxic gases immediately, and can block egress routes in seconds. Fire departments in cities with high e-bike adoption—New York, San Francisco, Chicago—are reporting a marked increase in battery-related residential fires.
For the fireground, residential lithium-ion fires present a familiar structure fire with an unfamiliar hazard. The battery may still be actively propagating when crews make entry. The toxic gas profile is different from a standard contents fire. And the reignition risk means overhaul takes on a new dimension.
What Your Department Should Be Doing
1. Train Now, Not Later
Every firefighter in your department should receive baseline training on lithium-ion battery fire behavior, hazard recognition, and tactical considerations. This isn't a specialty topic anymore. It's a bread-and-butter response issue. NFPA, the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI), and CTIF are all publishing evolving guidance that should inform your training program. Fire Engineering's back-to-basics primer on lithium-ion fires is a solid starting point for company-level drill material.
2. Carry the Right References
Install the EV Rescue App on every officer's phone and every apparatus tablet. Make it part of your standard response protocol for vehicle fires and vehicle accidents involving EVs. Knowing where the high-voltage systems are located before you start cutting is not optional.
3. Evaluate Suppression Tools
Products like the Bridgehill blankets, Turtle nozzles, and Ziamatic cooling units represent the current state of purpose-built EV fire tools. Evaluate what makes sense for your response area. A department on a busy interstate corridor has different needs than a rural department, but both will encounter these fires.
4. Plan for Extended Operations
EV fires are not quick. Thermal runaway can take hours to fully resolve. Reignition risk persists for 24 hours or more. Your incident planning needs to account for extended water supply, crew rotation, and post-fire monitoring. Towing companies need to understand the risks. Salvage yards need to know what they're receiving.
5. Update SOGs
If your standard operating guidelines for vehicle fires haven't been updated to address EVs and lithium-ion batteries, they're incomplete. At minimum, your SOGs should address SCBA requirements for all lithium-ion fires (including small exterior fires), minimum approach distances, high-voltage isolation procedures, and reignition monitoring protocols.
6. Coordinate with Hazmat
The toxic gas profile of lithium-ion thermal runaway overlaps with hazmat response considerations. Departments with hazmat technician capabilities should integrate EV fire scenarios into their training rotations. For departments without in-house hazmat teams, knowing your hazmat mutual aid response time is part of the planning equation.
The Bigger Picture
Lithium-ion battery technology isn't going away. It's expanding—into grid-scale energy storage, power tools, medical devices, and applications we haven't seen yet. The fire service will be responding to these incidents with increasing frequency for the rest of our careers.
The good news is that the research community is engaged. NFPA, FSRI, CTIF, and numerous university labs are studying suppression tactics, gas exposure risks, and battery design improvements. What we know today is more than what we knew two years ago. What we'll know in two more years will be more than today.
But the fires are happening now. The training can't wait for the research to be complete.
For firefighters looking to deepen their technical knowledge, the career guides section covers specializations including hazmat response and fire investigation that intersect directly with lithium-ion incident response. And if you're studying for a promotional exam or entry-level test, our firefighter exam practice quiz is a solid way to sharpen up.
Stay sharp. Stay curious. And keep your SCBA on longer than you think you need to.