McGoldrick was encountering fires like this increasingly usually. The earlier 12 months, he says, a number of rowhouses had been badly burned after overcharged lithium-ion batteries in racing drones ignited inside. In one other close by incident, previous lithium-ion biomedical gadgets at a scrapyard acquired soaked in a rainstorm and combusted.
The Tesla hearth felt like a breaking level. “We had been like, ‘Okay, that is simply too many incidents in a brief period of time,’” McGoldrick recollects. He went in quest of somebody who might assist his firm get higher at responding to fires in lithium-ion batteries. He discovered Patrick Durham.
Durham is the proprietor of (and mustache behind) StacheD Coaching, one in all a rising variety of personal corporations serving to first responders discover ways to cope with lithium-ion battery security, together with electric-vehicle fires.
Though there isn’t stable knowledge on the frequency of EV battery fires, it’s no secret to EV makers that these fires are taking place. But the producers supply no standardized steps on the way to combat them or keep away from them within the first place, leaving first responders scrambling to go looking by every automotive’s emergency response information—one thing that’s laborious to do once you’re standing in entrance of an immolating car.
On this void, Durham gives a wealth of sources to first responders, from easy-to-follow video tutorials to hours-long in-person workshops. In 2024 alone, Durham says he skilled roughly 2,000 first responders across the nation. As extra individuals purchase EVs, partially to assist tackle local weather change, the necessity for this coaching has solely grown; in lower than two years, Durham’s YouTube channel has attracted nearly 30,000 subscribers. (The US doesn’t at the moment gather knowledge on the frequency or causes of EV fires, however this 12 months the US Fireplace Administration and the Fireplace Security Analysis Institute are rolling out a brand new knowledge assortment system for hearth departments.)
A circumspect man with a shaved head, brown eyes, and a thick horseshoe mustache framing his mouth, Durham beforehand labored as a mechanical engineer creating battery containers for EVs. He’s additionally a volunteer firefighter, and in 2020 he provided his first coaching on fires in lithium-ion batteries to his native division. From there, his popularity unfold by phrase of mouth. At this time, StacheD Coaching is Durham’s full-time work. He’s additionally the captain of his native volunteer hearth division in Troy, Michigan.
As extra EVs hit the street, what worries Durham most isn’t simply the rising probability of battery fires—it’s their depth. “The severity of the hearth is critical in comparison with an everyday car hearth,” he says.
“The standard automotive fires that you simply and I grew up with—the vast majority of these at all times begin within the engine compartment,” says Jim Stevenson, a hearth chief from rural Michigan who has taken Durham’s coaching. “So we principally get there, we pop the automotive hood, after which we put out the hearth from there, and if it will get into the inside compartment of the automotive? Not a giant deal. You spray it down with the hose, and it’s out very quickly.” With EV fires, Stevenson says, “it’s only a fully completely different monster.”
