Do EVs, E-Bikes and Other Devices Present a Community-Wide Fire Risk

In this episode of Take It To The Board, we wanted something more reliable than rumors and worst-case headlines regarding EV fire risk, so host Donna DiMaggio Berger called someone who works with real data and is a battle-tested first responder: firefighter Emma Sutcliffe, director of EV FireSafe in Australia, the team behind a detailed verified global database of electric vehicle battery fires across cars buses trucks and more.
 
 Donna and Emma discuss what the numbers suggest, including why EV ownership is climbing faster than EV fire counts, and why EVs who have sustained any sort of damage including a “fender bender” remain a major fire trigger. Emma explains how lithium-ion thermal runaway works in plain language, why off-gassing can be both toxic and flammable, and why secondary ignition can cause severe injury even after flames appear “out.” Donna and Emma also compare EV risk to internal combustion engine fires while acknowledging the hard part of any comparison: vehicle age, maintenance, and different failure modes.
 
 From a community association and property management standpoint, they focus on what you can control: creating EV charging station rules that require NEC-compliant equipment, qualified electricians, and a clean path for owners to install chargers without improvising with extension cords and adapters. This episode digs into hurricane and flooding realities, including why salty storm surge can create delayed fire ignition days after a storm passes, plus practical steps like disconnecting charging, relocating vehicles when possible, and coordinating with local fire departments through a simple pre-incident plan and a master isolation switch.
 
 If you manage a multifamily building, sit on a board, or own an EV in a shared garage, this conversation will change how you think about EV charging safety. 

Conversation Highlights:

• What happens during a lithium-ion battery fire and why these fires are so difficult to extinguish
• Whether EV fires can reignite hours or even days after the initial event
• How EV fires differ from traditional gas-powered vehicle fires
• The most common misconceptions boards and residents have about EV fire safety
• What boards should be doing now—even if only a few residents currently own EVs
• Building design factors that can make EV fires more dangerous or harder to contain
• Safety concerns surrounding resident-installed EV charging stations
• The added risks of EV batteries and charging systems in flood-prone and saltwater environments
• Best practices for charging station placement, installation, and ongoing maintenance
• Why associations should revisit insurance, engineering studies, and reserve planning
• How emergency response protocols for EV fires differ from traditional vehicle fires
• What regulatory and safety guidelines communities may want to adopt voluntarily

Related Links: 

• Resource: EV and Battery Fire Training
• Resource: EV Charging Station Poster

Transcript

Welcome And The EV Shift

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hi everyone, I'm attorney Donna DiMaggio Berger, and this is Take It to the Board, where we speak condo and HOA. Electric vehicles are no longer the wave of the future. They're here. They're increasing in popularity and they're quietly reshaping the way our communities operate. We're constantly balancing individual rights with collective safety, so today's episode is particularly pertinent as electric vehicles and EV charging stations become much more prevalent in community associations. But, as usual, innovations bring trepidation and fear of risk. In the Sunshine State, we have a law which gives owners the right to install EV charging stations in their parking spaces, even if those spaces are located inside an enclosed parking structure. As a result, some community association leaders and residents fear that lithium-ion battery fires, which do burn hotter, longer, and more unpredictably than traditional car fires, will increase their potential liability. This is particularly true when EV charging stations are being installed in enclosed parking garages, some of which are in flood-prone buildings where water and electricity may collide. Additionally, many older buildings with insufficient electrical infrastructure are now facing a whole new set of challenges they were not originally designed for. Today's guest is at the forefront of this global conversation, and her data may surprise you regarding the relative risks between EVs and internal combustion engine fires. Firefighter Emma Sutcliffe is the director for EV FireSafe in Australia. EV FireSafe is a private company researching EV battery fires and emergency response with funding from the Australian Department of Defense. They have developed the world's only detailed and verified global database of battery fires in cars, buses, and trucks, as well as specialist EVs in aviation, mining, military, and airports. While their database is not publicly viewable, they freely share their global knowledge with the aim of enhancing safety for everyone working around EVs with a focus on the emergency responders. Emma has been tracking EV fire incidents around the world, studying how and why they happen, and most importantly, what communities can do to prevent and respond to them. She regularly speaks at industry events about the hazards of EV charging and battery thermal runaway. She combines firefighting experience, technical research, and emergency response insight.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

So with that, Emma, welcome to take it to the board. Thanks, Donna. That was a great introduction. I'm gonna get you to send me that so I can use it again.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

You know, and I have to tell our guests we're taping this. It's uh early morning where Emma is in Australia, and it's end of work day where I am in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So yeah, it kind of worked out for both of us.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

It is, yeah. We're we're uh we're in your future. We're we're the next morning. So yeah.

What EV FireSafe Actually Does

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Well, this is a futuristic episode. Or actually not, we're here. We're we're we're we're doing it. So maybe we can you can kick us off, Emma. For those who are not familiar with EV Fire Safe, so what do you do? I mentioned it in the introduction, but what do you do?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah, so EV Fire Safe is uh is a is a private company, as you mentioned. Uh, we do four things. So we research electric vehicle battery fires and emergency response, and we have funding from the Australian Department of Defense for to do that that part of that work. And that's led to a global database. And from that database, we can look at things like what's causing battery fires, how many are connected to charging, you know, uh are there faults in various cars because we're seeing a number of fires in that particular make a model. So the database has been incredibly helpful, and not just for you know, kind of government and other people here in Australia, but globally to help guide policy, particularly around the installation of charging. So that's the first, that's where we started. We then have branched out into consulting. So we do a lot of work in critical infrastructure, so shipping ports, airports. But 2026 for us is all about training. We've developed a training platform and we're trying to download all the mad knowledge that we have stuck in our heads and kind of share it with everybody else. So we've got a series of training courses coming. We we do train emergency responders, but we're trying to focus on business and industry to help them reduce their risk and therefore hopefully firefighters won't be as busy with listening battery fires. And then the final thing we that we do is response. So we can respond to an incident, and we're often called in after an incident and uh usually by the insurance company to come and remove the battery, dehazard it, and um and investigate it.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

So, how many years have you been mining data on this issue?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah, it's we started back in 2018, end of 2018, and it literally started as a Word document and then went to an Excel spreadsheet. Now we have this amazing kind of dedicated platform uh online that that gives us it, it's just this uh very, very cool database system. Like if you said to me how many EV fires happened on a Tuesday since 2010, I could tell you, no, it's it's a fantastic system. Yeah. So um, and we have a researcher called Kira who's been with us uh with me from the very start. And and there's uh Kira is our database guru.

EV Fire Trends And Main Causes

SPEAKER_01 5:14

So I you've got enough, you've got enough data now for me to ask this question reasonably. Are you seeing an increase? I I've got to imagine you are because there's more EVs and EV charging stations in the environment. So what are you seeing in terms of like if you were graphing this thing, are we going straight up in terms of a graph or are we kind of zigzagging?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Yeah, it it's a it's a great question. What we're seeing, obviously, as you say, there's obviously going to be an increase in electric vehicle battery fires because we have more cars on the road. But what we're what we're seeing around the world is uh essentially the number of electric vehicles doubles year on year, but we're not seeing a doubling in the number of fires. So that the certainly the graph is increasing, um, but we're not seeing that number spike every year to a to double every year, essentially. Interestingly, what we are seeing though is that year on year, the number of electric vehicle battery fires connected to charging seems to be kind of steady at around, it sort of sits around 15, 16, 17 percent of all incidents. So it's that that number is not actually increasing. And that's primarily because the leading cause of an EV battery fire is road traffic collision. So you you you have a road traffic collision, the battery gets damaged or the battery gets torn open, and that's what leads to that fire.

Why Lithium-Ion Fires Challenge Responders

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Are you finding the tech is changing? So as these incidences occur, whether it's a collision on the road or it's the car charge, you know, in at night. By the way, I want to tell you, I have I am an electric vehicle owner. I have a port cochere, I've got my little charging station outside. It's not in the garage, it's it's a covered port cochere, but I just plug it in. I love the convenience of it. But this this episode in particular was of interest to me because I do own an EV and I do have a charging station at my house, probably not the same as some of what you're seeing out there, the commercial. But is the tech improving over the years? In terms of the the the battery technology?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Yeah, the fire risk. Yeah, certainly. And and um, yeah, eventually we'll we'll be put out of business because eventually, so at the at the moment, there's no such thing as a fireproof lithium ion battery. Any lithium ion battery can go into what's called thermal runaway or catch fire essentially. Um, but eventually someone will come up with the magic formula where we go, okay, well, that's a that's a fireproof battery. It doesn't matter what you do with it, you could shoot it with a bazooka and it's just not gonna catch fire. But until we get to that point, we've got millions and millions of EVs on the road, uh, you know, these the the the ones that you know can catch fire in the right circumstances. So we, you know, we've got a bit of a job, particularly for you know emergency responders, firefighters in particular.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, I was gonna say that. You're a firefighter yourself. I imagine these are particularly dangerous fires for first responders to encounter.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

I think that every situation that a firefighter walks into is gonna is potentially dangerous, of course. Um, I think what makes uh electric vehicle battery fires and any lithium-ion battery fire, because we have lithium ion batteries throughout our entire lives, um, makes it dangerous, is that we we don't really have all the answers yet. We can't really put them out. It's very difficult and it's practically impossible to extinguish uh a lithium ion battery fire just because of the chemical process that's occurring. We don't really have that magic formula again where we can go, okay, well, we use this and or this technique or this method, um, and and that's our fire dealt with. So um that's what makes them dangerous, is that they're still new, they're still kind of unpredictable. Um, and as a a colleague of ours, Professor Paul Christensen likes to say, he he kind of talks about we've had a hundred years to work out how to manage petrol and diesel car fires, but we're really just still starting with EVs. And um, whenever an EV catches fire here in Australia, we've only had um 13 electric car battery fires here in Australia. Myself and my team are, you know, we're we're we're like kind of ambulance chasers. We'd go find the car and usually bring it to to our workshop and tear it apart to figure out what went wrong. So we're we're really hungry for information, um, as are you know flyfighters globally.

Parking Garages And Fire Department Rumors

SPEAKER_01 9:24

You're not telling the car while it's still on fire. You're waiting until it's completely we wait until it's cooled off a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, listen, I mentioned in the intro that with innovation, regardless of the innovation over the years, it often brings a certain amount of trepidation, fear of risk. So for our condo, let's take our condo communities. I'm here in Florida, but we've got people listening all over. You're sure you've got condos in Australia. A lot of them we're talking about whore, you know, vertical construction. A lot of times we're talking about an enclosed parking structure. You know, sometimes there's a lot of times there's outdoor spaces, but often there's covered parking and it's uh covering it in a concrete structure. Um, there's been rumors floating around for the last couple of years in Florida that the fire department will not come put out an EV charging station or an electric vehicle on fire if it's parked in this structure. Have you heard these? And I by the way, I've gotten no verification from fire departments that this is actually the case. Okay. The case, but it is going around as a, you know, we've got a law in Florida, I mentioned it in the introduction as well, that says if you have a parking space, you're entitled to install an EV charging station if you want to have one. The problem with that is a lot of these people have parking spaces where? In an enclosed parking structure. So what do you think about that, Emma?

Safer Charging Through Standards And Vendors

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Yeah, what people fail to mention when they talk about firefighters won't go in to put out an EV fire, is that firefighters may not go in to put out a petrol or diesel car fire either. It depends on what's happening in that car park space. Um, so when we talk about charging, particularly in in condos, we call them apartment buildings here, a little, we're a little uh little less sexy of a name, but anyway. Um the I think one of the things that I really, really encourage is that if as soon as as soon as people start to buy electric vehicles, is that the HOA, I think that's the right terminology, looks at installing charging in a regulated and safe way, in a compliant, regulated, safe way. Because when we have electric vehicle drivers that don't have a dedicated charger or a safe way that they can charge, they start to improvise. And they do things like I'm gonna get three extension cables and I'm gonna daisy chain them to this PowerPoint over here and plug my car in, you know, 50 meters away, or I'm gonna use a powerboard. We had a gentleman here in Melbourne where I live who bought a Japanese car and he bought it into the country and it wouldn't fit the charger, wouldn't fit into the Australian PowerPoint. So he bought a travel adapter, the kind of thing you buy at the airport, plugged it in using that. And of course, what happens when you start to improvise like that is these things fail, they catch fire, they spread to the EV, and then you you potentially have a battery fire. So it's really important that you you can't kind of hold back this tide of of electric vehicles. As you said in the introduction, they're here. So for what we what I find is that uh, and this is global, not just here in Australia, not just in Florida, um, but globally, people buy an electric vehicle, they're in an apartment building, a condo, and suddenly they're like, Well, what do you mean I can't install charging? And and why can't we do this? And and the the the the the body corporate or the HLA haven't really kind of considered how they're going to do it. And that's when we start, we're starting to see this rise of essentially, you know, electrical, poor charging practices, electrical wiring and fires that then spread to the vehicle. So when we talk to organizations like like you know, the the ones that you you you talk to and work with, my biggest piece of advice is if you're getting those questions, do it in a structured way. Choose maybe three electrically compliant charging units, find three electrical installers and give those options to your your um property owners and say, here are our preferred suppliers. We want you to do it this way. We don't want you to buy something off Timu, and we don't want your uncle's brother's dog's postman to install it because he's not an electrician, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

So this is you have hit on a really important issue, Emma, and I'll tell you um, here's the problem. Some boards, and I'm I'm confining this to Florida because in Florida it's a law that I mentioned that if you own, if you have a space, you're entitled as a condo owner to install an EV charging station. Some boards know this, or their management professionals know this, and they say, think there's nothing we can do about this. We have to allow it. But no, they don't have to allow unsafe installation, as you said, somebody's uncles, cousins, friends coming over, the trickle chargers. We've seen trickle chargers being used, yes, and cords. Yes, it may be the law, but there is a safe framework that can be erected around that. I don't know why people don't want to call lawyers. We're friendly, we'll tell you what you can do, we'll we'll problem solve with you. But I do think exactly there you go. You know, another option would be, and more of our boards are starting to do this, Emma, is install a community charging station. Brilliant idea. Yep. Do a community charging station, especially those older buildings that have uh aging in electrical infrastructure. These vehicles are here. You may need to upgrade, but it's going to actually impact, I think, their real property value as more and more people own these vehicles. They're gonna want to buy in places where they can charge their vehicle as opposed to I live in this condo, but I got to drive over to that um shopping mall to charge my vehicle.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Correct. Absolutely correct. And and putting in like a single uh 50 kilowatt DC charger that is gonna charge an EV a lot quicker, and then having some kind of um booking in system for the owners in that that that group to to use that charger is a great idea. Okay, it's not it's not perfect. You can't just sort of plug your car in and go to bed, but it works. It works as a system. We've seen that in older apartment buildings here in Australia as well, uh, where that kind of process has worked very, very effectively. And I would encourage that. I I I don't know, um, I couldn't quite work out what the laws were in in Florida around uh sprinkler systems, but I would encourage that for older buildings where maybe there aren't fire protection systems like sprinklers of ventilation. Yeah, put it put a 50 kilowatt DC charger in. Um charge, obviously, you know, get the owners to pay for the use of that through an app or whatever. But um, that's a it's a really good alternative.

Why E-Bikes Burn More Often

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Sprinklers and older buildings in Florida, that's a whole different podcast episode, Emma. They've been fighting that for years, and and and we think we've got that one solved. Most of the older buildings have been retrofitted. But let me ask you this why do people perceive such a risk with the electrical vehicles and not these e-bikes and e-scooters and all these other little devices that also are plugged in? They also have those lithium-ion batteries, correct?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Correct. Yeah. So uh the average Australian home, and I would imagine the US will be very similar. The average Australian home has up to 33 lithium ion batteries in it. So we're talking here things like your toothbrush, your phone, your laptop, your vape, your vacuum cleaner, uh, you know, 33 of them. And uh right through to, you know, power banks, power tools, sex toys have lithium ion batteries in them. A sex toy set fire to a rubbish truck here in Australia last year. So it's my favorite story. Um but we have them everywhere in our homes. And the the and the and I'm gonna generalize a bit here, but when we talk about what we would call a fast-moving consumer good, so things like vapes, power banks, e-bipes, e-scooters, there's loads and loads of them being made very, very quickly because they're in high demand. That means often, uh, that, and in most cases, the the battery quality isn't very good. And we have in every LithMai battery pack, we have what's called a battery management system, and the battery management system isn't very good. And a lot of the time, these products have been so quickly developed and in high demand that they regulation is still catching up to them, safety regulations and standards. When we talk about electric cars, they have enormous safety regulations because we've had cars around for 100 years. Um, they have to be crash tested, you know, all of that kind of thing. So the battery cells you get in your car are extremely high quality. They are very sophisticated. And it's no exaggeration to say that we see electric vehicles in collisions where you would think the battery should have caught fire and it doesn't. I've seen star pickets through the top, through the through the underside of electric vehicle batteries. I've seen batteries that have almost been cut in half in in um in collisions with no fire. But with our smaller consumer goods, they are catching fire. Okay, I would again imagine it's the same in the US. Uh here in Australia, we see one e-bike or e-scooter fire every day. I know that we see it too.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

We see it too. Yes. And parked in garages, in residential garages, which you can imagine what happens.

EV Risk Versus Gas Cars

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Exactly. And I and in Australia, we've had 10 fatalities uh from e-bike and e-scooter fires, four of whom were children. And uh I'm gonna talk to New York statistics here. Sorry, I couldn't find anything uh quickly for Florida, but uh in New York they're seeing one of these a day. And um, thankfully, the education that they've done has really dropped the fatality rate uh that the New York uh New York Fire Department have done. That's dropped the the fire, the fire fatality rate uh down. But they were seeing enormous numbers of fatalities. And it were, it wasn't typically the people that own the e-bike or the e-scooter, they're just the victim of the fire that occurs. And I think there's this misconception. There are two things happening here. There's a misconception that the batteries in those fast-moving consumer good items are the same as what's in an EV. And people see these e-bikes, e-scooters go up and they go, Oh, that must be the case with EVs. That's point number one. Point number two is that politically, electric vehicles seem to just have this. There's you either it's almost like you either love them or hate them. And you've got politicians, again, I'm not talking Australia or the US, I'm talking globally, that are either for or against. And we've got people online, uh, it really annoys me. Uh, we've got people online who make money on things like YouTube raging about how bad electric vehicles are, like, they're gonna kill us all. And uh, and and people watch that and they make money from it, you know. But then firefighters are like everybody else. Firefighters are subjected to the same misinformation, in some cases, disinformation online as everybody else. So we kind of, yeah, we we're kind of fighting this battle of, yeah, we've got some new challenges here, but it's nothing we can't overcome. Testing research with, you know, going to look at real-world incidents, doing case studies, and sharing it across the world. And I'm really pleased to say that we we talk to a lot of American fire departments, and they've always been just awesome at sharing information that we can then disseminate to to our network, and then that gets gets shared again. And it, you know, by sharing this information globally, we really start to really help the the global firefighter community understand it better. And that's the goal, right? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Do you have data, Emma, on the prevalence of um fires associated with internal combustion engines versus EVs?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Uh look, it's a really tricky one. Uh we we we don't really, uh there's very little data that we have on this. Um, but uh there is some country-based data, but it's it's you know, and it's still early. And we have this challenge. Uh, I do have US data on this, but we have this challenge as well that internal combustion engine vehicles, the average age of an internal combustion vehicle in the US is 12 to 13 years old. And the average age of an EV is four years old. So when we compare the two, you know, you've got an internal combustion older, they've got 30,000 moving parts, sorry, 3,000 moving parts compared to maybe 30 moving parts in an EV. So you've got more to go wrong here than you do here. There's just no direct kind of comparison where we can go, yes, you're 20 times less likely to have an EV fire. Having said that, yes, it would at the at the moment the data suggests that you're far less likely to have an EV battery fire than. You are to have a fire in your petrol or diesel vehicle. You are more likely with an EV to have a battery fire if you've been in a collision, if your car has been exposed to another fire, so your electrical wiring's caught fire, you've used a cheap adapter, where there's a fault during the manufacturing process. So some vehicle brands have had recalls because they've had a fault in the manufacturing of the battery pack. And the big one for your listeners in Florida is if they've been submerged in water. And we know that Florida has had this happen after in hurricane season quite a lot. It's been quite an issue for the fire department following hurricanes.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

It's a real risk. And it's and it's also a risk personally, because I live in South Florida. My husband and I decided, well, we always have to have the SUV that's not electric in case we need to get out of here. And my little electric vehicle. But it is a real risk because a lot of our condos are located in flood-prone areas. And particularly incredibly emo, we have some condos, not many, but some have underground parking in Florida, if you can believe this.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

And you've got salty flood water as well, is the other challenge. So all the cases that we've seen globally where an electric vehicle has gone into thermal runaway, the batteries caught fire after it's been submerged has been in salty flood water. So freshwater is, yep, it can definitely happen with freshwater, but it's it's salty flood water. And we're talking here, you're safe to drive through paddles and things. You know, you're safe to drive in the rain. That's absolutely fine. The batteries are very well sealed. But when you have a storm surge and then that area is flooded and we've got the battery pack underwater for an extended period, and we're talking here days, maybe a week, maybe longer, water can ingress into that battery pack. And then as the floodwaters recede, the battery typically kind of dries out, starts to dry out. But you you're left with this kind of conductive path of salt crystals and it corrodes the cells quicker. And then, as I'm sure many of you listeners will be aware, you know, your storm's kind of over, your recovery started, and people start to move their EVs out of their garage. That's when we get the fire because the the cells are corroding, you know, quietly while it's sitting in the garage. Then you move the car and something gets knocked or or you know, wheeled or turned or whatever, and the cell collapses and up it goes.

Thermal Runaway Explained Simply

SPEAKER_01 24:32

So you've mentioned thermal runaway twice now, at least. It sounds ominous. Can you walk us through the process?

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Sure. So uh, like you, I have an EV, I have a Tesla model three. So in my EV, I have a my battery pack, I have 4,416 battery cells. And they look like the battery cells you put in the back of your TV remote. They're just a bit bigger. Uh, many of you listeners may have seen them. So if I'm driving down the road, I'm going to touch wood here. If I'm driving down the road and I'm in a collision, what can happen is that uh one of my battery cells, one of my 4,000 battery cells, can be impacted and it gets, let's say it gets crushed and it short circuits. So the anode and cathode touch. Now inside every single one of these little battery cells is a tiny little bit of liquid electrolyte. And we won't go into the why that why that's in there, but it's a little tiny bit of liquid. And what happens when the the battery short circuits is it starts to heat up uncontrollably. There's an enormous amount of heat that starts to starts to generate. And the liquid electrolyte boils and becomes a gas. And the pressure inside the cell builds up and the gas bursts out of the cell. And the gas and it forms a really quite a surprisingly big gas cloud. And people will look at it and think it's smoke. We hear from people all the time, I saw smoke. Well, you know, it's actually this liquid electrolyte that's boiled, boiled off and become a vapor. Now, the vapor is what's on fire that's highly flammable. So it's not really the battery packets, the battery does eventually catch fire, but it's those gases that are catching fire. So it's highly, highly flammable, but also highly toxic. So if you're in the area where uh you get a lung full of of this uh this vapor, it can really affect your health. And in some cases, we've seen fatalities, not from cars, but from e-bipesy scooters, where it's been off-gassing in while someone's been asleep and um they've inhaled that and they don't survive. So the that off-gassing is very, very toxic, and then it's very, very flammable. So our one cell collapses, it it the vapor comes out of it, that catches fire, the heat spreads to the next cell, the next cell does the same thing, that heat spreads to the next cell, and the next cell does the same thing, and we get this domino effect. So thermal runaway is it's heating and it's kind of running through that battery pack, if you like. That's the simplest way of explaining it. And this is why battery fires and EVs are such a challenge, because our cells are going through this thermal runaway process, but the cells are all contained in like modules, in the they're covered in a, they're in a metal case called a module. And then the modules are all in a bigger metal case called the pack. So we can't get water. We if we can get water onto the onto the cells, we can cool them down potentially. We can stop that heating process. We can take some of the heat out with fire water, but we just can't reach the cells to be able to do that. So that's the the simple version of thermal runaway.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

It sounds like a nuclear meltdown from what you're describing, almost.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Yeah, yeah, I guess you could put it like that. I've never heard it described like that, but uh, you could put it like that. But at least we know when we reach, you know, 4,000 odd cells, it's gonna be over.

unknown 27:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Well, but it but it also sounds to me, because I was gonna ask you, Emma, about the fatalities, it's yeah, it's not necessarily catching on fire, it's breathing in the the the off-gassing that's coming off these vehicles or a scooter or motorized. So I guess if you if you if you happen to be in a collision and something's coming out of the car, it's an EV, get away as fast as possible. Don't stand next to it. Correct.

Toxic Vapor And Re-Ignition Danger

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Yeah, absolutely. And look, you know, again, it's the same, I would say the same for for any vehicle. If you're seeing smoke or something coming off any vehicle, you know, smoke from uh from an internal combustion engine vehicle fire can potentially be fatal as well. But what I will say is that this is a particular challenge that we're we're, you know, it seems kind of crazy that we learn so much new stuff so frequently in this space, even though we've been working on it for years. But it's only recently that we've uh discovered some firefighter injuries from the inhalation of those gases. So the Sacramento Fire Department had four firefighters injured last year. So they'd attended an incident, the battery had been on fire, uh, that fire had been dealt with, that the fire had subsided. But as they were moving the vehicle, it went into what we call secondary ignition. So half the battery pack, you know, if we've got 4,000 cells, let's say half of them burnt out and then thermal runaway stopped. But we've still got 2,000 cells there that are still live. They still, you know, have energy in them. And those cells can go into second, secondary uh ignition. And that's what happened in this case. And four firefighters were caught in that vapor cloud. They they didn't, they'd taken their breathing apparatus off uh to clean up. And they were caught in that that vapor cloud. Um, after yeah, pretty, pretty much immediately afterwards, they started to feel nauseous. So we're hospitalized. And a year later, almost a year, well, it is a year later because it happened in April last year, um, they're yet to go back to work. So they're still suffering injuries as a result.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

So I'm so sorry to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Yeah, we've we've been checking in with the with their um commander quite a few times, and their battalion commander, but they're they're on the mend, but a year off work and you know, an unknown uh and this is the other thing. We don't really the medical profession don't really have a procedure or a kind of uh treatment for this just yet. So it's it's all fairly new.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

They don't have the protocol, but it's true if I'm listening to you, these fires, depending on how many of the cells are left, they can reignite days later.

Hurricane Flooding And EV Precautions

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Can that's correct? So we've got two things that can happen. So an EV can be in a collision or some kind of incident, and there'll be a delayed ignition, which is what's happening in Florida. So our initiation event is the flooding event, so the flood, the storm that happens, but our fire is actually delayed. It may not happen for days or weeks afterwards, which is why, when after a major flooding event in Florida, they'll put EVs out in a paddock, uh, non-burnt EVs, they'll put them out in a paddock with a bit of a clearance between them. So if they do catch fire later on, it doesn't spread to other vehicles. So that's a delayed ignition. And then a secondary ignition where we've had a fire, but maybe not all the battery cells have burnt out, but the rest of them can catch fire later on. And and in a handful of cases around the world, we've seen that actually where EVs catch fire more than twice. They might catch fire three or four times. But it it secondary and delayed ignitions are not super common, but there are there's certainly a risk, and particularly for our tow sector, tow recovery salvage, um, insurance assessors, those kinds of people that are taking custody of that vehicle after it's been damaged. So it is a real risk. Um, and the the record at the moment, I can't remember where it was in the US, but there was an EV involved in a collision, it was taken to salvage, and two years later, it went into thermal runaway. So that's two years, two years. So it's one case globally. So it's very, very rare. But we we actually did to be honest, Don Right. When I heard about that one, I thought, no, someone's someone's done something to the car two years later. But we spoke to the crew and and like, no, it it um no, it just went up unexpectedly. Because often we hear, you know, someone in his salvage gel has accidentally put a forklift time into the battery pack and caused it. But no, it it was soon there quite quite happily. So listening my own batteries, and the same goes for everything vapes, power banks, any anything, well, yeah, power tools, that kind of thing, anything with more than one battery cell in it. We can see that that happen later on.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

So I'm I'm absorbing so much of what you're telling me. And and I'm and I'm and I'm looking at it through the lens of a community association attorney because we have boards and management professionals that reach out. June 1st is our sixth month, the start of our six-month hurricane season here in Florida. And some of the questions that are gonna come at us are um, oh my God, we have three owners in a row. They all have EV charging stations, they all have EVs, and uh we're going into hurricane season. What if we have a named windstorm? Would one of the best practices, Emma, be to uh move the vehicles uh assuming there's outdoor spaces in addition to indoor spaces? And I've had this I've had this question posed to me, and now that I'm listening to you, I think they had the potential risk reversed because they thought the EV was the bigger risk, but it could just as well be the EV charging station. So one of the questions that I was asked is should we allow the EV charging stations to be indoor in the enclosed parking structure, but move the vehicles outside so they can be charged, but then they got to move move outside. What do you think about that question?

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Yeah, okay. I will take this in stages. So the first thing I want to say is that um when you've got an electric an electric vehicle that is not damaged, so it's not there's no fault, it hasn't been submerged, you know, in a collision, any anything like that, where it's operating perfectly normally and it's connected to an electric vehicle charging unit that is electrically compliant. So uh with you guys, it's the NEC, and it's been installed by someone who's qualified to do so, so by a qualified electrician, uh, to the wiring standards, you cannot cause a battery fire to occur in that vehicle. So when everything is operating normally, you can't cause a battery fire in an electric vehicle. It's different for e-bikes and e-scooters, but in electric vehicles, you it's electrically impossible because what happens is when you plug that car in, there's always that kind of pause and then a bit of a plunk noise. That's the car and the charger doing what they call a handshake. And they're saying, I'm doing a bunch of safety checks, and there's up to kind of 20, 30 safety checks that it's doing. And only once it's finished all those safety checks, that that handshake does the power flow. So if you have an electric vehicle that's repeatedly refusing to charge, you keep plugging it in and it won't charge, you plug it in and get it, it won't charge, that can sometimes point to there's a problem with the battery because the charger in the car are just like, no, I'm not liking something here and I'm gonna, I'm just not gonna deliver power. And again, that feeds back to that point that I made before about um if boards are really concerned, one of the best things they can do is make sure all the charging is is compliant and installed to the correct standard by the relevant person because that just immediately reduces our risk. With you guys in Florida, it's quite a tricky situation. I mean, the and I did actually have to think about this last night. What's something that can be done if you get that warning through that you've got a hurricane coming? What can be done with EVs? And it's it's a little bit easier with the smaller batteries, so power tools, e-bikes, e-scooters, they can be maybe moved up a bit higher out of the waterline. Um, with EVs, I think um, I'm gonna have to brainstorm this one with the team and get back to you, I think. But I think one of the things that can be done is that it's like you say, it's moved out of the building because then because our danger period with EVs after a hurricane, as I said before, is when the hurricane's finish, we're we're in the recovery process and they start to move them. Right. So if they're outside the building already, yeah. Already, then we've we reduce our risk of that fire spreading to the building. So I think that's a really sensible move. How practical it is in terms of is there enough space to park uh, you know, all these EVs outside, uh, you know, is is another question. Um, but um yeah, it's uh it's an interesting one. Maybe, maybe someone clever who's listening can come up with some kind of bubble or something that can be put around an EV to stop the water getting into it. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

I think this is a shark tank idea. We've had some shark tank people on the show talking about that. Well, and I would imagine a simple preparatory step would be disconnect the EV charging station, correct?

SPEAKER_00 36:37

Correct. Yeah, look, I mean, disconnect the charging. What what we look, this is a working theory only. I can't prove anything of what I'm about to say. But what we suspect might happen is you're at home, you've got your car plugged in, suddenly you have to evacuate and you forget about the car because you've got to get your kids and your dogs and everything else out. And you you evacuate. Flood waters come in and car's still connected to charging, floodwaters come in, the grid goes down for a bit, then everything subsides, you know, the water, floodwaters subside. Um, the grid power goes back up, but car's still connected to charging. And then that kick of power can cause those already damaged cells that have been submerged in water, already damaged cells to collapse. Theory only. So, yes, I think very, very sensible to disconnect your charging and move your vehicle outside uh if you've got an electric vehicle. And I would say the same for we we also see a lot of um electric golf buggies. Again, in Florida, you guys seem to like your little golf buggies. Um, same with those, because you can't really put those up higher. I'd I'd do the same with those because we we've I I believe we've seen at least one golf course kind of um have a major fire following hurricane uh due to the same issue.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

What about draining the battery, Emma? In addition to everything you've said, move it out. If it's, you know, I don't I have a lucid, I'm gonna give a shout out. I love my lucid. Oh, nice. But but it was 90%. So I I don't charge beyond 90%. But if I know a storm is coming or I'm gonna have an issue, does it make sense to drain the battery down to almost nothing? Would that help?

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Uh if there's time. So uh yes, because if you've got if your car is at 30% state of charge, there's a little bit of energy in there. There's a you know, a little bit of energy to drive around in. Um but if it goes into thermal runaway, which is essentially, you know, if we think about thermal runaway as releasing that energy in the form of fire and vapor and, you know, that kind of thing, at 30%, we're likely to get a bit of off-gassing. We may see flame, but we're not gonna get an extended, you know, so it's probably not gonna burn through the whole pack. But if your car's at 90% set of charge, we've got lots and lots of energy in there. Yeah, if thermal runaway occurs, it's really violent, it goes for a long time. We're gonna see jet-like flames, it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be like fireworks, it's gonna be really, really kind of entertaining for want of a better word. Um, so yeah, absolutely. I mean, if if you can, um if there's time to, you know, drain the battery, but again, that's tricky because uh, you know, if people are using their EVs to evacuate, then you want it at a higher stage charge, I guess. Yeah.

Pre-Incident Plans And Power Shutoffs

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Yeah, it is it is a trick, tricky situation to try to navigate if you only have EVs and you're trying to figure out what to do. Um in Australia, do you have any requirement that EV owners in apartment buildings have to let the local fire department know that there are EVs? Because I'm thinking about this right now, and I'm thinking maybe one of the best practices we need to embrace is we need to reach out to the local fire department and go, hey, we've got five EVs in this building, so they know beforehand.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

One of the best things you can do is always talk to your local firees and um sorry, firefighters. I'm using the Australian, this the Australian slime. Back in 2023, EB Fire Safe wrote um guidance for the Australian Building Coard, so that applies to you know uh any buildings in Australia. And in it we talked about a pre-incident plan. And then off the back of that, we've actually developed a uh essentially an online training course for um for a partner for condos, for fleet managers, any any kind of um commercial or multifamily residential. Um we don't actually have a US version of it, unfortunately. It talks about Australian and New Zealand um regulation. But in that, we provide people with what's called a pre-incident plan template. And it's very, very simple. It's a it's a little template and it says, what's our address? How do firefighters get in? If there's a gate, how do they get access to the to the area? Um, how do they shut down charging? So if you've got a car park with, let's say, 50 of these and 50 chargers, is there a master isolation switch somewhere where they can shut down power to every single charger in one fell swoop? Who do they call to get in? You know, how many, you know, how what's the what's the use of that building? Is it just residential? Is it a shopping center? What's the use of it? Um, all of those kinds of details. And so you put in your charging, um, and we have checklists and everything that they follow to make it as safe as possible. Then you fill in your pre-incident plan, and this is the really important bit, Donna. Then you call your local fire brigade, so your local station department, and you ask, you invite them down. And the important bit is you've got to buy donuts and you've got to have good coffee. You invite them down, you feed them, of course. You feed them, and then you show them where the charging is and you show them where the isolation switch is and you go, cool, this is what we've done. Here's what we're doing, this is all we've we've done it, so we've designed it so it's all under sprinkler systems, that kind of thing. And they will use your plan or they'll they'll typically write their own plan and they'll put it in the truck. And then if they get called to your address, they know exactly what they're doing. And it speeds up that process. And you know, at one point, um, I I don't know about in the US, but here in Australia, if you've got um solar panels and you've got battery storage, you've got to have a little sticker on your on your kind of distribute on your fuse box. And I kind of feel like we need a little sticker, like an EV sticker, so that firefighters don't have to go into a building to figure out what's in there. We always always need just a little discrete sticker going, yeah, we've got battery storage, we've got solar, and we've got EVs.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Well, it totally makes sense. And we have requirements for a universal key. So they if they need to get the elevator, you've got that. I mean, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about so many things that we can add to our emergency plans, Emma. And normally when I'm representing an association, if an owner says that that he or she wants to install an EV charging station, I'll prepare a restrictive covenant, an agreement that they're gonna have insurance, um, that they understand that they're gonna have to pay to move it if the underlying pavement needs to be um repaid and reinstalled, all of that. But now I'm also thinking that I need to add language that the owner needs to notify the association when a recall is issued. Because absolutely how would they know? How would anybody know? And not everybody's super reliable when it comes to transmitting this information, but this episode has really triggered a lot of a lot of thoughts for me in terms of how we can safer.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Exactly. And and even I and we can actually help you with that. We've got a a charging site poster. I'll pop it through to you via email. It's free for anyone to use. And it just has that on there. If your car has been in a collision, it's been submerged, it's on a recall, blah, blah, blah, don't charge here. If your car is refusing to charge, don't charge here. If you see or hear these things, that's that's potentially an EV battery fire, please evacuate and raise the alarm. It's really, really simple stuff. It can be put up at any, uh it should be at every, we'd love it at every charging site everywhere, because it it informs the drivers. The homeowner association is is is up here kind of worrying. About it, but if we can educate the drivers, we start to reduce our risk even further. Um, but I think um simple things like that that um that uh help educate everybody and and um and and and put that in. And and in that in that legal agreement, yeah, you the you you call your local fire service and and make sure there's a pre-incident plan, or if you already have pre-incident plans, update them to to include the the fact that there may be charging here. That's a great I'll pop that through. The master isolation switch. If firefighters can shut down power to every single car charging in that car park in one fell swoop, that decreases their level of risk dramatically. It's really it's just a really simple thing that's super easy to do and makes everyone a lot safer.

Training Resources And Product Myths

SPEAKER_01 44:46

And who doesn't want to safeguard their local firefighters? That's an obligation, that's an obligation. And it makes sense. Right. It helps the residents, it helps the first responders. Where can people find you in evfire safe?

SPEAKER_00 44:59

So our research is at evfiresafe.com. Uh we have a training platform at evfire safe.training. Um, and now that we're talking about this, I think I'm gonna go in, yeah. I think we should do a a little. We we do get asked the question quite a lot. What are the kind of the basics that everyone can do just to to make firefighters safer? I think we need to to we we do have some information, the the guidance that we wrote for the Australian Building Code Board. Um, and as I say, the the training course. Um the the the other thing that does concern me is I I hear a lot from people that they they were concerned about it. So they bought a someone bought a fire blanket or a fire extinguisher for lithium battery fires. And um, we've tested those. They're not they're not a hundred percent safe. They don't they don't work. Um so I'd much prefer people did things like educate drivers and think about uh okay.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

We're we're only gonna we're only capturing the we're we're only capturing the audio, but you saw the look on my face. Yes, it was a shark, it was a shark tank product for electrical fires. And I um I did buy a few. Okay, well I'm not gonna re-gift them.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

I'm not gonna re-gift them. No, no, no, keep keep them, but just tell firefighters that they're there. Maybe don't miss them yourself. Um but yeah, there's there's uh there's some simple things that that can be done to to I'd I'd much prefer people get educated rather than just kind of try to buy something and take it off and go, oh, that problem's dealt with, you know. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

That's kind of been your through line in this episode, Emma, is don't do it alone. I mean, this is sophisticated technology. Um, just trying to plug something in with an extension cord or have, you know, have it be submerged for a while and then think it's that's not going to be any impact. You really need to understand the devices that you are buying and using when they involve lithium-ion batteries. Is that pretty much correct?

Warning Signs And When To Evacuate

SPEAKER_00 46:58

The message is correct. Absolutely. And if I can and if I could leave one kind of message uh for everyone, it would be that particularly with your smaller devices, your power banks, power tools, e-bikes, e-scooters, you know, you're even your phone and your laptop, if your lithium-ion battery and and figure out where they are in those devices, you know, have a look at the device, you'll be able to find where the battery actually sits, you know. But if your lithium-ion battery um feels unusually hot, they will heat up a bit to when they're charging or in use. But if it feels really hot and you haven't used it or it's not been charging, if it looks swollen, and if it smells funny, they are the early signs that there's maybe something wrong with it. So if any of those occur, please take that battery somewhere outside where if it does catch fire, it's not gonna, it's not next to your bed or your cushions that are gonna be highly flammable. And then figure out how you responsibly dispose of that. You'll need to probably call your local council authority, um, maybe the HOA have some pathways, local waste, e-waste centers, that kind of thing. Figure out how do you get rid of that battery safely. Don't put it in the bin because then they set fire to rubbish trucks. And that's a whole, that's a massive issue around the world at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

Well, before you move off that part, I'm thinking about the pleasure devices you were mentioning earlier and the people now freaking out about how to dispose of it if they need to, but okay. Yes. What's the second bit of second bit of advice?

SPEAKER_00 48:29

You'll you'll have to just uh swallow your embarrassment there and uh figure that one out. Uh the the second part is if you've got a lithium ion battery in your home and uh and it makes a loud popping noise, like almost like a gunshot kind of noise, and you see what you think is smoke, what we talked about before, those vapors, please do not try to put it out. Please don't try to deal with it yourself. Please don't try to carry it out of your home. Just get out, get your family out, get your dogs out, warn your neighbors, pull uh for you guys 911. I was about to say triple O, which is what it is here in Australia, but 911, and tell the call taker that you think you've got a lithium mine battery fire because that will prepare the firefighters as they arrive. They'll know what they're doing. Um, we we've seen uh lots and lots of injuries and fatalities in people where they've been trying to deal with this themselves. And it's a fire that we currently can't put out. So if firefighters can't put it out, you can't put it out. So please don't try, you know, especially if it's an e-bike or an e-scooter, you've got multiple battery cells in there. As they go into thermal runaway, they can they can come loose out of the pack and actually become little rockets and they shoot off around your your home and they'll set they'll set multiple fires, you know. So they're really, really dangerous to deal with if they're in thermal runaway. So please don't, please don't try, just let firefighters deal with it. And any firefighter in the world will always say to you, we much prefer if you call us and it's a false alarm than not call us and suddenly everything's gone wrong. So yeah, loud popping noises. That's the first sign that there's something wrong. Loud popping noises, a really loud hissing as as vapors escape. They if you see that, and and this can happen in seconds. So if you see or hear those things, please evacuate immediately.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

Yeah, and and and I guess you need to teach your children these signs as well if they're using. I know it's it's it's very scary, but I want to make sure again that we go over that because that was really important advice you gave. The natural inclination, I've had an oven fire before. I cook a lot, uh, it is to either use water or smother something. So are you saying don't do either of those things? Don't try to hose down the the e-bike, don't try to smother the the e-scooter, just get out, call the fire department and say, I think I have a lithium iron fire on my hands.

Final Takeaways And Closing

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Correct. Correct. Uh the you can't put it out with water. Um, look, in some cases, we have seen people be successful with something small like a power bank or your mobile phone. Um, if that goes into cell or runaway, if you put it in a bucket of water, that can deal with it. Um, but you're breathing in those toxic gases that I talked about before. And they can, you know, as with the firefighters in Sacramento, that can cause long-term injury, can be fatal in some cases. So I totally understand the inclination to try and save your home or save save your property. Absolutely, I totally get it. But if it's something bigger, power tools, e-bikes, e-scooters, and of course your your car, just get out. Just get out and leave it and um, yeah, let the professionals get on with it.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

Emma, thank you so much. I really appreciate the time you have taken with us today.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Great. Thanks so much. It's been awesome talking to you. And um, have a good evening from uh from the other side of the world.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast platform or visit takehtotheboard.com for more ways to connect.