Burned beyond recognition.
Spark Plug
Pennsylvania firefighters doused a Tesla that had caught on fire at a Supercharger Station in the borough of Mechanicsburg, according to a Facebook post from the local fire department, leaving a dramatic shell of what was once a white vehicle.
The firefighters from the Upper Allen Fire Department responded to the scene on Monday just short of 6pm after receiving a report of a vehicle fire at a Sheetz fueling station, where they found the Tesla in flames.
After quenching most of the fire, the firefighters moved to cool the electric vehicle’s battery pack with more water and had the local hazmat unit perform help with “spill/run off control.”
Pictures from the scene showed a ruined husk of a car parked next to a Supercharger Station with the interior burned black beyond recognition.
Thankfully, there were no reported injuries.
Fire Starter
The Facebook post from the firefighters didn’t specify the cause of the fire, but the incident nevertheless highlights the special dangers around blazes involving electric vehicles.
Fires involving electric vehicles are rare compared to automobiles that run on fossil fuels, but special care must be taken to extinguish these fires because the battery pack inside can burst into flames again — even days afterwards — once it has been been ignited.
“What happens in the battery, it goes into a thermal runaway — the battery just keeps generating its own heat,” Fire Captain Peter Rocco of Hackensack, New Jersey told NorthJersey.com. “It takes a long time to cool that down. We’re talking seven hours of an inch-and-¾ hose line just flowing water.”
He’s not kidding. A March fire in Hackensack involving an electric vehicle required the fire department to stay on site for several hours because they had to pour umpteen gallons of water on the battery pack in order to cool it down. Also, smoke from an EV is quite hazardous.
If you do find yourself driving an electric vehicle that’s combusted into a blaze, unfortunately a common fire extinguisher won’t work.
Instead, it’s best to get out of the vehicle as soon as possible and call the fire department to take care of the situation.
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