Panama City Beach firefighters had their hands full Monday night after an electric vehicle crashed on Back Beach Road.
The batteries on electric vehicles cannot be extinguished by water, or anything else once they catch fire. Stories like this are becoming all too common on America’s roadways.
The vehicle from Monday’s accident hit a concrete barrier. Once the flames spread to the lithium-ion batteries, there was no stopping it.
“We were on scene for about 2 hours with a constant mix of water flow and a water rest just to try to cool the actual battery compartment ourselves, which was actually a pretty good amount of time given the history of what it takes to put these fires out,” Panama City Beach Fire Chief Ray Morgan said.
Firefighters used 45,000 gallons of water on the vehicle.
“Departments all across the nation are wrestling with this and the technology has not caught up with putting these out. Pretty much everybody tells you it’s going to take copious amounts of water to cool these battery packs it really has changed our response,” Morgan said.
When Hurricane Ian hit the Ft. Myers area in 2022 the storm surge covered hundreds of vehicles. Many of the electric cars caught fire.
“We have seen an uptick in EV electrical fires and lithium ion fires a lot of times what’s happened is the fire will start with the battery. This isn’t really as much of a problem, say, in an Atlanta or a Dothan or a Birmingham. There’s no salt water there. So where you have a high mineral content water, this is where it has become of a concern for the state of florida. When you look at lithium-ion batteries, it’s a technology that’s not going away. It’s here. We use it in everyday life,” Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said.
Patronis said there is a team of individuals working towards aiding this issue.
In early May, Gov. Ron Desantis signed legislation giving Patronis the ability to create new guidelines for fighting lithium-ion battery fires.
Patronis has recruited a team of experts to come up with a plan.
“We’ll bring everybody into the meeting room. We’ll have the EV manufacturers; we’ll have our fire professionals. We’ll also have those that are playing in, say, the space of new emerging technologies. We’ll all collaborate together for best practices. But the federal government has a role in this. We have a role in this. Our local fire departments have a role in this,” Patronis said.
Congress recently passed the “Setting Consumer Standards for Lithium-ion Battery Act.” We should see both state and federal legislation in the near future.
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Source: Mypanhandle
