West Jordan firefighters using new heavy, specialized blanket to fight EV fires
Jul 25, 2024, 1:37 PM
West Jordan Fire Department trains with new heavy blankets to fight EV fires. (Adam Small/ KSL NewsRadio)
(Adam Small/ KSL NewsRadio)
WEST JORDAN— West Jordan firefighters trained Tuesday morning on how to fight an EV battery fire. And fight not with water, but with a specialized blanket.
EV fires, or electrical vehicle fires, while not as common, are more tricky to put out than the average gas car fire. This is because the battery is designed to protect the inside from the elements.
This new specialized blanket is supposed to help with that.
“It’s made out of fiberglass and kevlar … it weighs about 80 pounds, it’s 20×30,” said Owen Nuttall, firefighter paramedic with the West Jordan Fire Department.
Nuttall told KSL NewsRadio the idea for the blankets came from firefighters in California. These firefighters ran into problems fighting EV battery fires the conventional way.
“They would dump 4,000 to 5,000 gallons of water on one [EV fire] and still not completely extinguish it,” Nuttall said. “It was causing a lot of issues with heavy metal runoff getting into the water systems, which is really hard to mitigate.”
Nuttall said the single-use blankets can fully cover most EVs, including Tesla’s new Cybertruck. It cannot completely cover bigger EV models, including Amazon delivery vehicles.
“This really is … the first step in us learning how to fight these fires,” Nuttall said.
Nuttall said, to his knowledge, they are the only Utah fire agency that has these blankets.
“We want to be the people that are out on the forefront trying to figure out the best way to approach these fires,” Nuttall said. “This is just the first step to that.”
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