A electric bus that was part of the state’s transportation fleet after catching fire in July. Despite a rising number of electric vehicles in the state, firefighters say they lack training on how to handle complex fires that can erupt from the vehicles’ batteries.

Despite the growing popularity of electric vehicles in Connecticut, firefighters across the state have received little to no training on how to combat the intense fires that can erupt in their specialized high-voltage batteries, fire officials say.

The lack of adequate training became apparent last month when one of the state’s newest electric buses became engulfed in flames at a depot in Hamden, in what officials described as a rare but challenging fire involving lithium-ion batteries used to power vehicles.

After the fire, the Department of Transportation pulled the rest of the state’s fleet of electric buses from service while federal transportation officials conducted an investigation. At the same time, firefighters around the state have escalated their efforts to develop a standardized set of practices for fighting electric vehicle fires.

“Unfortunately, the majority of the firefighters in the state of Connecticut have not had good training on electrical vehicle fires, because there’s not a lot of training available,” said P.J. Norwood, the director of training at the Connecticut Fire Academy.

Norwood said the issue is not unique among Connecticut fire departments. At a recent training conference in Philadelphia with representatives from around 20 departments, Norwood said that only officials from Boston and New York City reported having any written protocols for dealing with electric vehicle fires.

“The technology is changing so rapidly and the manufacturers are trying to make their product as good as they can,” Norwood said. “Because of that ... they have not done a good job on providing the fire service nationally with the information that we need.”

While experts stress that electric vehicles are not at a greater risk of catching fire than other cars — one study found that all-electric vehicles were involved in the fewest number of fires when accounting for total vehicle sales — they tend to be involved in more complex fires that are harder to put out. Among the challenges posed by electric vehicle fires are extreme heat and the potential for the lithium-ion batteries to continuously re-ignite, even long after the flames have been doused.

According to a 2020 report by the National Transportation Safety Administration, it can take upwards of 2,600 gallons of water to extinguish a high-voltage battery fire. (By comparison, the typical fire engine carries about 500 gallons of water in its tank).

Jason Emery, a battalion chief in Waterbury who serves as an expert on electric vehicle fires for the National Fire Protection Association, said that the main difficulty with the fires arises with a process known as “thermal runaway” — in which the battery cells ignite in chain reaction within their protective metal casing, making it difficult for responders to place water or foam on the source of the fire.

“Really when it comes to fighting EV fires, once it reaches the lithium-ion battery, that’s where the fire service needs to adapt a little bit,” Emery said. “Because you could put 30,000 gallons of water on the car, but most of that water isn’t actually going to be going towards extinguishment.”

Citing the ongoing investigation by the NTSB and state officials into the July 23 fire in Hamden, Acting Fire Chief Jeffrey Naples declined to reveal specifics this week into how the department fought the blaze. However, he said it was the first time firefighters in the town had ever encountered a burning electric vehicle, whether on the streets or in training.

“This is new, so we don’t have any hands-on experience with having a vehicle that we can light on fire and then show them how to put it out,” Naples said.

Connecticut saw a record number of electric vehicles registered during the second half of 2021, bringing the total number of electric vehicles in the state to over 21,000. During this year’s legislative session, state lawmakers voted to add thousands of new electric vehicles to the road by converting the state’s fleet of cars and trucks to electric by 2030.

Despite those strides, Norwood said the Fire Academy’s training curriculum for fighting high-voltage battery fires is limited to a few presentation slides included in the general training for vehicle fires.

While officials said the Hamden fire was the first to involve an electric bus in Connecticut, it is unclear how many total fires have involved electric vehicles since they became widely available over the last decade.

The Office of the State Fire Marshal, which is responsible for maintaining the state’s database for the National Fire Incident Reporting System, did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

“You look at social media and do a Google search and you can find [the fires] happening across the country, but I don’t think locally in Connecticut it has been identified as a problem until recently,” Norwood said.

Prior to the bus fire grabbing headlines in Hamden, Norwood said he had already begun reaching out to fire agencies in other states to gather information about their training practices only to be frustrated by a lack of available information. After the fire, he said he assembled a group of fire service professionals from around Connecticut to collect data and develop a set of best practices that can be distributed to individual departments.

Norwood said he hopes the group will hold its first meetings within the next several weeks before releasing its initial findings in two to three months.

One of the experts involved in developing those guidelines, Emery, said that much of the available information on how to extinguish high-voltage battery fires has come from the car manufacturers themselves, while fire experts continue researching more effective measures at combating the blazes. Norwood said that he hoped to reach out to the manufacturers and car dealerships during the process to gather even more information about the cars.

“At this stage, the general recommendations are to contain the fire, control the fire and just monitor the battery fire itself to make sure that it doesn’t extend past the battery,” Emery said.

Meanwhile, in Hamden, Naples said his office is already being inundated with calls from fire chiefs in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania who are seeking any advice following the agency’s well-publicized battle against the flaming bus.

“As much as loss as it was,” for the state’s electric vehicle fleet, Naples said, “This is always something we want to learn from.”