By Chrissie Thompson
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT — When firefighter Jason Emery arrives at the site of a major car crash, he knows to disconnect the car’s battery to shut off the source of energy.
But if that car is an electric vehicle, Emery might have to take a second step - cutting off the much larger lithium-ion battery pack.
Emery, a lieutenant in the Waterbury, Conn., fire department, is on the front line of a new safety challenge: reducing the risk of fire when electric vehicles and hybrids are in accidents. As lead electric-vehicle safety instructor for the National Fire Protection Association, Emery helped develop an online class that more than 10,000 firefighters have taken since April. General Motors and fire academies have also hosted training sessions.
Still, automakers lack one consistent fire-prevention procedure for electric vehicle batteries, Emery said. Manufacturers, including GM and Nissan provide notebooks with recommendations. GM also sends in a team to drain the car’s battery following any major Chevrolet Volt accident.
So Emery said he would prefer standard procedures, which could come once the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finishes its review of post-crash electric vehicles. NHTSA announced the review last week after confirming a Volt extended-range electric had caught fire more than three weeks following a crash test.
That Volt caught fire because NHTSA did not know to drain the Volt’s battery. The battery case had been punctured, spilling coolant, which caused a short that in turn triggered a fire, GM spokesman Rob Peterson said this week.
The NHTSA reiterated this week that it believes electric vehicles have no greater risk of fire than any other vehicles.
The automaker is working to give NHTSA its tool to drain Volt batteries, Peterson said. The tool should be available at dealerships next year, eliminating the need for the GM team to visit in the case of a crash. GM has only had to send out employees to drain batteries a few times this year, he said, since the automaker has only sold about 5,300 Volts so far.
GM has held first-responder training in major Volt launch markets such as Detroit, California and Washington, D.C. In addition, the National Fire Protection Association has trained academies in 12 states and hopes to hold a session in all 50 states by theof next year.
“Most emergency responders are going to be able to handle it,” he said. “In reality, we handle whatever gets thrown at us.”
Even if firefighters haven’t been trained, Emery said, they have long been familiar with the danger associated with extra batteries in hybrids.
The firefighters’ group is also compiling a quick-reference guide that would keep each manufacturers’ recommendations handy for firefighters.
Volts have been involved in three fires, but the NHTSA blaze was the only one so far to have been blamed on the car. In one of the other fires, a garage blaze in Connecticut, the Volt’s battery was not drained, which caused the car to reignite three days after the original fire.
Both NHTSA and GM continue to insist the Volt is at least as safe as gasoline-powered vehicles. After all, GM spokesman Greg Martin said, more than 200,000 fires occurred in gasoline-fueled vehicles last year in the U.S.
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