Did you know there is one vehicle fire roughly every 3 minutes in the United States?1 While the data doesn’t provide a further breakdown of the type of vehicle (hybrid, electric, or traditional gasoline-powered vehicles) involved in the incident, we know that Electric Vehicles (EVs) have illustrated their own unique risks to emergency responders. With the federal government’s goal of reducing carbon emissions and increasing the manufacturing of zero-emission vehicles, we, as the fire protection industry, are in a race to improve first responders and public safety in such incidents.
NFPA’s research affiliate, The Fire Protection Research Foundation, and UL Research Institutes, The Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI), are two organizations that are working diligently on this challenging topic. On May 30th, 2025, both organizations released a joint notice that highlights the potential risk of an explosion when fire blankets are used during EV fire suppression efforts with battery involvement.
Here is what you need to know:
- Experiments conducted by both organizations have demonstrated a potential explosion hazard when fire blankets are used during electric vehicle (EV) fire suppression efforts when there is battery involvement.
- When flaming is eliminated by the fire blanket, the ongoing accumulation of flammable gases released by continued thermal runaway in the battery pack presents a potential explosion risk.
- The experiments reinforce the need for continued research on EV firefighting tactics.
The Research Foundation is currently in the middle of a two-year, six-phase project titled: “Assessment of EV Firefighting Tactics, Tools and the Impact on Stranded Energy.” This study reviewed background research and test methods and aimed to identify knowledge gaps and develop and conduct testing programs consisting of baseline hazard battery pack fire testing, pack-level suppression testing, stranded energy assessment and management, and full-scale vehicle suppression testing. One of the next tasks includes analysis guidance and training module development, which will be disseminated and communicated across the industry.
While the project is still underway, recent experiments were conducted to assess the ability of four different firefighting tactics to suppress and establish control of fire incidents involving standalone electric vehicle battery packs and fully electric vehicles with confirmed battery pack fire involvement:
- Standard hose stream application – water only;
- Standard hose stream application – with an injected agent;
- Electric vehicle fire blankets
- Firefighter appliances
Preliminary results will be presented at the NFPA Conference & Expo in just over a week in Las Vegas, and the full analysis will be provided in a published report, which will be made publicly available this fall.
FSRI’s research program titled: “Fire Safety of Batteries and Electric Vehicles”2 aims to improve the understanding of hazards generated by EV battery fires to enable the development of firefighting tactics for effective EV fire control. In the first series of this study, full-scale experiments are being conducted in a laboratory setting to collect data using carefully designed and placed instrumentation to understand the burning characteristics, thermal and chemical exposure risks EVs pose to firefighters, bystanders, and the built environment and how construction of an EV influences the burning behavior. In the second series of full-scale experiments, researchers are examining fire control strategies for managing the hazards of thermal runaway associated with EV batteries to advance the next generation of EVs, battery packs, and EV-related safety standards that benefit firefighter operations.
Between the time I drafted this article and when it was published, two major incidents occurred that captured the world’s attention. The first incident occurred off the coast of Alaska when the Morning Midas cargo vessel, transporting 3,000 vehicles (800 of them EVs), had to be abandoned by its crew after they could not control a fire on this topic. The other incident occurred in Philadelphia, where a fire damaged 40 decommissioned SEPTA buses, including 15 EV buses. Firefighters and the public are anxiously waiting for the findings of both studies.
References:
- Fire Loss in the United States During 2020 by Marty Ahrens and Ben Evarts, NFPA
- Know the hazards generated by electric vehicle battery fires. (n.d.). https://fsri.org/research/fire-safety-batteries-and-electric-vehicles
Image via Shutterstock.
