Recent Updates

At FASS, we have covered in a couple of news updates the dangers of lithium batteries in terms of a fire and/or explosion risk if they are not stored correctly, or protected from impact and damage or used in inferior quality items. The resulting fire can be truly catastrophic even from a relatively small battery.

Our attention was drawn to a recent article posted by ERI online which looks at the other end of the scale, the 5 largest known Lithium Battery fires in the USA to date (March 2022) which really illustrates the intensity and destructive power caused by these fires.

It is therefor extremely important to follow these key steps:

• Only buy devices from an authorised or legitimate dealer, do not be tempted by inferior replica products that may be cheaper
• Always follow correct usage and storage guidance for Lithium Batteries
• In Public buildings, offices, care homes, schools etc it is always good practice to ensure you have the correct extinguisher medium (i.e. NOT water for lithium batteries!) available for the devices you have. FASS are happy to advise you of this
• When your device or battery reaches the end of it’s life, always recycle the Lithium Ion Batteries responsibly. Check with your local authority for the location of suitable recycling facilities

Here are the 5 largest Lithium Ion Battery fires in the USA to date as listed by ERI Online:

Royal Waste Services in Jamaica, New York

One of the biggest fires ever was a five-alarm fire in Jamaica, New York. A lithium-ion battery sparked a blaze that brought much of the Long Island Rail Road system to a halt for ten hours. Clouds of black smoke overtook the region as hundreds of firefighters battled the fire.

What caused the plant’s fire? It turned out that a single lithium-ion battery sparked trash, piles of paper, and cardboard recycling, and wind gusts of up to 37 mph added to the problems firefighters faced. It took close to a full day to extinguish the fire. Power lines that were affected by the fire had to be replaced.

Superior Battery in Morris, Illinois

An abandoned paper mill in Morris, Illinois, caught fire in 2021, leading to the evacuation of more than 1,000 homes. The owner of the building was storing lithium batteries he planned to use to start a solar power company called Superior Battery. It’s believed that water leaking in from the roof, sparked a battery to ignite, and things steamrolled from there.

More than 200,000 lithium batteries were in the building, creating a chain reaction of battery explosions that added to the initial battery fire. City officials and firefighters were unaware lithium ion batteries were stored in the building, so they first battled the fire with water, which is dangerous and made things worse.

Because water is ineffective for putting out large-scale lithium ion battery fires, over 1,000 pounds of a dry chemical known as Purple-K was used, but that didn’t help extinguish the growing fire. Instead, dry cement was pumped in to cover the burning batteries to a depth of three feet.

Governor Pritzker was forced to declare a disaster due to this fire. The building’s owner hadn’t yet notified the city of the batteries in the building, nor had he filed business permits. Plus, he didn’t have insurance putting the responsibility of the cost of putting out the fire and evacuations on the taxpayers’ shoulders. In August, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit against Superior Battery hoping to get some money to lower the burden on taxpayers.

 

Felicity Ace Burns in the Atlantic Ocean

In February 2022, a ship sailing from Germany to the USA caught fire. On that ship were around  4,000 vehicles from Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, and Volkswagen. While the cause of the fire is yet unknown, many of the cars onboard were EVs, and their lithium-ion batteries posed a threat for reignition. All crew escaped the ship and reported that the smoke was coming from burning vehicles, raising questions if an EV car’s battery sparked the blaze.

Crews fought the blaze for weeks before the ship sank off the coast of the Portuguese Azores in what is essentially no man’s land. Despite the ship’s final resting spot sitting outside of Portugal’s jurisdiction, the Portuguese military has been monitoring the ocean for pollution as the thousands of vehicles had more than 4,000 tons of fuel and oil combined.

 

Shoreway Environmental Center in San Carlos, California

A four-alarm fire broke out at South Bayside Waste Management Authority’s Shoreway Environmental Center back in 2016. It took 79 firefighters several hours to put the fire out. A few days later, a second fire occurred. No one was injured in either blaze, but the facility did experience water and smoke damage that took three months to correct and kept the facility from being able to operate as normal.

During that time, some of the workers had to be laid off for a few months . Insurance rates for the facility drastically increased, driving up prices for area residents. One thing the facility’s general manager made clear after is that area residents need to be very careful when it comes to recycling. Batteries cannot go into trash or recycling bins. When consumers do this, a small amount of damage is all it takes for a lithium battery to explode and start a fire.

 

Vistra Energy’s Facility in Moss Landing, California

Vistra Energy is the world’s largest battery storage facility for storing solar and wind energy. The risk of combustion from overheating is higher, especially if the batteries are damaged in some way. This is exactly what happened at Vistra Energy. While systems prevented the battery storage facility from going up in flames, the fact that even a few packs melted is concerning.

Back in September, the 300 megawatt facility shut down when several overheating battery packs melted and triggered the fire suppression system to kick in. About 7,000 batteries were soaked by the system and damaged in the process. The company shut down the 300 megawatt facility, but a smaller 100 megawatt facility was still in operation at the site.

On February 13th, that smaller facility experienced a second incident. Again, it’s believed that water hoses leaked and damaged some of the facility’s battery packs. It was especially concerning as the company was about to reopen the 300 megawatt facility. Those plans have since been scrapped until the facility can figure out how to prevent additional meltdowns if there are hose leaks. While the fire suppression system worked effectively both times, there are fears about what could happen if the systems failed and hundreds of these batteries exploded.

For further information on the correct extinguishers for Lithium Ion Batteries or advice on your Fire and Safety needs, please contact us.

A recent Business Insider report has brought to the wider Worlds attention an incident where an experimental Amazon Prime Air drone set several acres of a wheat alight after crashing in eastern Oregon during a test flight last summer.

Details contained within the June 2021 FAA report seen by the publication, describes how the Amazon delivery drone prototype (Model MK27) was flying at an altitude of 160 feet before it suffered motor failure and crashed to the ground. The drone was seen “tumbling in uncontrolled free fall until it contacted the ground,” following which an “intense lithium battery fire quickly consumed the aircraft.” which then resulted in the field fire.

This is not the first incident Amazon have experienced with drones suffering failure, only a few weeks prior to this incident another delivery drone prototype crashed due to propeller failure although fortunately it did not result in a lithium battery fire.

Whilst the purpose of development is to push the drones to the outer limits to understand the operational boundaries, this does also highlight the inherent risk of lithium batteries dropping from altitude at speed and the potential for a fire on impact. This is true of all drones and something operators of drones should be mindful of.