Batteries of a Tesla semi truck caught fire on California’s Interstate 80, leading to the closure of the freeway for 12 hours as firefighters employed emergency and unusual measures to extinguish the fire.
The incident happened in the Sierra Nevada mountain range around 3:00 a.m. and urged the authorities to close the major freeway and divert the incoming traffic amid the fears of toxic fumes that a burning EV battery usually exhales.
Jason Lyman of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) discussed how the battery of an electric vehicle catching fire is drastically different from normal fires.
According to him, battery fires are not extinguished by normally spraying water, which makes their handling complex. Lyman further stated that fighters either need dry chemicals or up to 40,000 gallons of water to deal with this fire effectively. These complexities meant that the road had to be closed immediately, as car batteries faced the danger of “thermal runaway,” a phenomenon in which these batteries can explode even hours after their fire has been extinguished. A battery explosion is highly disastrous and can take multiple lives.
The same threat of explosion and continuous emergence of dangerous fumes also meant that firefighters could not go near the vehicle, which led the fire crews to use an aircraft to extinguish fires, a procedure that has historically been used to extinguish Californian wildfires.
Reportedly, the truck was traveling smoothly before going off the highway and colliding with trees. The I-80 freeway is a major traffic route to enter Nevada from California, and all the traffic heading toward Nevada had to take a longer route. Fortunately, no life was lost during the accident.
Electric vehicle fires have also posed significant challenges to fire crews in the past. Just last year, firefighters had to use nearly 6,000 gallons of water to extinguish the fire of a Tesla Model S in Sacramento, while the crew in another fire episode had to allow an electric vehicle to burn completely instead of extinguishing its fire due to the practically impossible firefighting procedure.
Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board is examining the case to study how fire can threaten the safety of lithium-ion batteries that are used in most electric vehicles. The agency said that their team will collaborate with the CHP to study the whole event and gather any necessary items for research purposes.
