Los Angeles has been rocked by some of the worst forest fires in the city’s history over the past week, with an estimated 40,000 acres burned across five fires. As the city prepares to start its cleanup effort, experts are now warning of the increased risk that abandoned electric vehicles could pose to the region’s recovery.
Fires started in Los Angeles last Tuesday and have so far burned through an area the size of Paris. They are still not totally under the control of firefighters, who are using all manner of aerial firefighting gear to try and tackle the blazes.
Folks fighting the fires were forced to take extra precautions while dealing with EVs caught up in the Palisades, Eaton and Hurst fires, reports the Express. The lithium batteries found in electric vehicles from the likes of Tesla, Polestar and Ford reportedly require extra steps to extinguish:
Los Angeles firefighter Lyndsey Lantz said: “It’s true: lithium batteries burn very hot, and we as firefighters are going to extra precautions on learning how to deal with them, put them out, dispose of them, things like that.”
“All of these houses burned because fire was moving through, driven by 50 to 60 mile-per-hour winds, and the car in the driveway went up with everything else,” Lantz added.
She said lithium batteries can be harder to put out and “take different means to extinguish.”
Now that the fires are gradually being brought under control in LA, officers are starting to turn their attention to the city’s recovery and the cleanup effort. Here, once again, EVs could pose an additional challenge, Automotive News adds.
Governor Gavin Newsom admitted that the recovery effort would be “complicated” by the relatively high number of lithium batteries that can now be found among the rubble that remains. He cited electric car cells, regular car batteries and Tesla’s at-home power packs as being the reason for the challenges that lay ahead:
“It’s a little different world now today, with batteries — not just car batteries, but battery packs, people with solar, those Tesla wall batteries and the like,” he said during an interview with CNN that aired on Jan. 13. “The hazmat side of this is made a little bit more complicated, which is fine. We’ll work through that.”
Newsom’s comments highlight the long days ahead for California, where experts will have to handle dangerous debris after first responders extinguish destructive fires. Newsom said he expects it will take six to nine months to remove the debris, with local, state and federal partners working “hand in glove.”
While gas-powered cars also pose a risk to first responders tackling the fires, it’s the unpredictability of EVs that’s the real issue here. Electric cars can reignite suddenly after getting “electrochemically excited,” Automotive News adds. There are also more risks associated with inhaling fumes from EV fires and there’s a greater risk of chemical burns when dealing with damaged battery packs.
This led experts to urge extreme caution when removing any damaged EV in the aftermath of the LA fires.