Excerpts from cschicago.com:
Experts from General Motors and the Illinois Fire Service Institute lead training at the MABAS Readiness Center in Wheeling where firefighters learn in the classroom before they face a fire involving an electric vehicle.
There are different responses and characteristics of lithium-ion battery fires than there are to internal combustion engine, or gas-powered vehicles. “The orange cabling or the orange components. Those indicate, as an industry standard, high-voltage components that we don’t want customers or anyone to pull on or cut,” said a staff engineer for GM.
“A lot of people were very afraid of putting water on an electrified vehicle because it’s water and electricity, and they’re under the misconception that the two don’t mix, when in all actuality, the most important thing we need to be using on these fires is water” according to an instructor with the Illinois Fire Service Institute.
GM has been on the road all over the country since June of 2022 doing these trainings as EVs get more and more popular. In fact, many market analysts predict by the end of this decade, at least 40 percent of cars on the road will be electric.
The training is free to all emergency personnel. So far, GM and the Illinois Fire Service Institute have traveled to more than 20 cities for these training sessions.
