McGoldrick was encountering fires like this increasingly more usually. The earlier yr, 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 In one other close by incident, outdated lithium-ion biomedical gadgets at a scrapyard received soaked in a rainstorm and combusted.
The Tesla fireplace felt like a breaking level. “We had been like, ‘Okay, that is simply too many incidents in a brief period of time,’” McGoldrick remembers. He went looking for 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 among a rising variety of personal firms 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 provide no standardized steps on tips on how to combat them or keep away from them within the first place, leaving first responders scrambling to look by every automobile’s emergency response information—one thing that’s exhausting to do if you’re standing in entrance of an immolating car.
On this void, Durham affords 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 educated roughly 2,000 first responders across the nation. As extra folks purchase EVs, partly 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 acquire knowledge on the frequency or causes of EV fires, however this yr the US Fireplace Administration and the Fireplace Security Analysis Institute are rolling out a brand new knowledge assortment system for fireplace 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 packing 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 present, StacheD Coaching is Durham’s full-time work. He’s additionally the captain of his native volunteer fireplace 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 fireplace is important in comparison with an everyday car fireplace,” he says.
“The standard automobile fires that you simply and I grew up with—nearly all of these all the time begin within the engine compartment,” says Jim Stevenson, a hearth chief from rural Michigan who has taken Durham’s coaching. “So we mainly get there, we pop the automobile hood, after which we put out the fireplace from there, and if it will get into the inside compartment of the automobile? 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 utterly completely different monster.”
