As deadly blazes continue to rage this week in the Los Angeles area, officials are grappling with new hazards amid the rubble: damaged batteries, including those from electric vehicles
When Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., said earlier this week that debris removal crews are poised to move into devastated areas, his office noted in a statement that batteries “can pose distinct risks when exposed to high heat from fires.”
“While the state has extensive experience with clearing cars with (internal) combustion engines,
cleanup teams are still adapting to newer technologies like Tesla and other lithium-ion batteries,” the statement said.
As Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida in September, officials there warned people to
move their EVs to higher ground because exposure to salt water from storm surge could lead to batteries short-circuiting and catching fire.
Following the Maui fires in 2023, federal hazardous material removal teams used new techniques to process lithium-ion batteries from electric and hybrid vehicles and power walls to reduce the risk of the damaged technology igniting and exploding.
What are the challenges?
If batteries are exposed to flames, they can become fire risks reigniting days, weeks or even months after the initial blaze.
Authorities advised people responding to the Palisades Fire to be mindful of them, identifying damaged or destroyed EV, residential and commercial lithium-ion battery packs as “hazardous structures” in a response plan for managing the fire earlier this week.
“Even after a fire has been extinguished, those batteries could be susceptible to reigniting,” said Eliza Hotchkiss, director of the Energy Security and Resilience Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
“That makes cleanup dangerous for the cleanup crews that are going in after a fire, so it’s really important that those are identified.”
When compromised, these batteries can short-circuit and heat up uncontrollably, releasing toxic and flammable gases that can catch fire. But the risk isn’t the same for all batteries, said Richard Birt, a retired firefighter and founder of Solar and Fire Education, which provides free training for firefighters.
Many modern home storage systems now use batteries that have a much lower risk of reigniting than those found in EVs, and don’t contain heavy metals, Birt said. A damaged residential battery could still hold a charge, he added.
Actively burning batteries can also produce toxic fumes. Additionally, EVs tend to burn longer than gas-powered cars, and these fires can be harder to put out because it’s difficult for water to reach the battery packs, Malmgren said.
The agency now deploys a specialized team into communities affected by fires to handle these batteries, Guria said. If there is a damaged battery, the team will remove it, taking precautions such as wrapping it in a thermal blanket and bringing it to another area where it is de-energized, a process that lowers its voltage.
While fire risk is the primary concern around damaged batteries, the technology could also contain heavy metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel that could leach into the environment, Hotchkiss said.
