Electric car owners have seen their rides catch fire after becoming waterlogged during Hurricane Ian and it can take hours to put the conflagrations out, a top Florida official warned Thursday.
As the Sunshine State recovers from the punishing Category 4 storm that made landfall last week, first responders have faced further destruction from electric vehicles that were submerged in water from the extensive flooding and later caught fire, Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer and state fire marshal, said on Twitter. [bold, links added]
“There’s a ton of EVs disabled from Ian,” he tweeted. “As those batteries corrode, fires start.
“That’s a new challenge that our firefighters haven’t faced before. At least on this kind of scale.”
In his tweet, Patronis posted a video of firefighters with the North Collier Fire Rescue District in Naples putting an electric vehicle fire out as a bystander is heard saying it’s taken thousands of gallons of water to extinguish it.
“It takes special training and understanding of EVs to ensure these fires are put out quickly and safely,” Patronis tweeted.
Additional footage of the same vehicle fire posted on Facebook by the North Collier Fire Rescue District shows firefighters dousing the car’s top and underbelly with water to eliminate any sparks.
The rescue district said firefighters received the call while Patronis and state Rep. Bob Rommel visited the area.
There’s a ton of EVs disabled from Ian. As those batteries corrode, fires start. That’s a new challenge that our firefighters haven’t faced before. At least on this kind of scale. #HurricaneIan pic.twitter.com/WsErgA6evO
— Jimmy Patronis (@JimmyPatronis) October 6, 2022
The two state officials were brought to the incident so they could see the difficulty of putting EV fires out and said it took firefighters hours to ensure the blaze was extinguished.
“This is an issue many fire departments across [southwest] Florida are experiencing right now,” the district wrote on Facebook. “These vehicles have been submerged in salt water; they have extensive damage and can potentially be serious fire hazards.”
Florida is only behind California for most electric vehicles on the road with more than 95,000 registered in the state, according to the US Department of Energy.
h/t Alan S.
Image via Florida State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis/Twitter
Read rest at NY Post
One more reason to stick with an IC vehicle.
Who would have thought that submerging batteries charged with hundreds of amp/hours in salt water would make them explode?
The article doesn’t say anything about them exploding. They are catching on fire.
Wait till the jerks find out their vision of electric energy
is in no way SUSTAINABLE
GUARANTEED
IT WILL HAPPEN
And what will the JERKS do then ?
And our Braindead Governor Newsom the Nit-Wit wants to force EV on us all over a totally fake crisis of Global Warming/Climate Change
What kind of official uses the term “a ton of EVs”? Not very professional in describing a quantity of something! We see one EV in a video with firefighters handling a fire. Every article is pretty much written verbatim in describing this car fire. Only one article mentioned there was a total of four EV cars that caught fire!