Washington Evening Journal
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Washington Fire Department conducts training on electric car fires
Andy Hallman
Apr. 19, 2023 11:22 am
WASHINGTON — The Washington Fire Department recently conducted training on how to extinguish electric car fires.
Washington Fire Chief Brendan DeLong noted in his report to the Washington City Council that the fire department conducted this classroom training on March 22.
“Electric cars present a large hazard to us, so it was informative and a crucial training,” DeLong said. “We had nearly every member in attendance.”
DeLong explained that fires in electric cars can be worse than non-electric because the electric car’s battery cells burn for a long time.
“In order to put out that kind of fire, you need tons of water,” DeLong said. “The batteries keep reigniting, and it’s hard to put them out.”
DeLong said the amount of water required to extinguish such fires is so great that some departments resort to digging holes to put the car in and then filling the hole with water.
A non-electric car fire requires only a “little bit” of water to extinguish, and often firefighters will extinguish them with foam. However, foam doesn’t work on fires in electric cars.
“The foam acts as a blanket, so it just traps the heat inside and the batteries keep reigniting, so it ends up doing even more damage,” DeLong said.
DeLong said the fire department has not had to extinguish a fire in an electric car yet, but it’s important to be prepared. He said knowing how to respond to such a fire is critical, especially if an electric car catches fire in a garage.
“They burn really hot with lots of flames, and the batteries are full of chemicals,” he said.
The Washington Fire Department responded to one structure fire in March, at 2446 190th Street, where a shed caught fire next to a large building. DeLong noted that the building was saved, and that the cause of the fire remains unknown. He also stated that the fire department was dispatched to spot for storms that came through on March 31.
“We were lucky to have missed the brunt of this storm,” he wrote.
The Washington Fire Department was unsuccessful in its bid for a Firehouse Subs Foundation Grant for its LUCAS device, a machine that performs automated compressions on a patient’s chest as part of CPR. DeLong said he will continue to look for other funding opportunities to pay for this device.
Though Washington Fire and EMS do not have a LUCAS device, the Washington County Ambulance does. DeLong said he wants Washington Fire and EMS to have one, too, for those instances where the ambulance is busy with another call.
“Sometimes we respond to someone who is in cardiac arrest, and we have to do CPR manually,” DeLong said. “We want something that can ease our response and make that more automated.”
DeLong informed the city council that, thanks to a “very generous donation,” the fire department would be able to purchase a rescue boat soon. The donor wanted their donation to go toward water rescue. This will incur no cost to the city.
DeLong said he hopes to purchase the boat in the next month or two. The fire department does not have a rescue boat, though the Washington County Sheriff does.
“Their boat is an older boat, and we use it for water rescue in the county,” DeLong said. “We wanted to upgrade that, and the donor came to us to ask what they could do, and we said we could use a new boat. We’d use it on creeks, at Lake Darling, and wherever else it needs to go.”
DeLong estimated the fire department responds to 1-2 water-related calls per year.
“If someone falls off a canoe in Lake Darling, or they’re stranded on a sandbar in the middle of a lake, that’s when we’d use this boat,” he said. “People go rafting on Skunk River, and if they get lost, we’d use the boat to look for them.”
Emergency Medical Services received 71 calls for service in March. DeLong said this was higher than previous months.
“A lot of these calls were intense calls,” he said. “The crew did an outstanding job in responding to every incident. This is awesome for a volunteer service.”
Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com