An electric car parked in the McCandless Crossing shopping plaza caught fire while charging on Tuesday evening. The car completely disintegrated, damaging several other vehicles.<\/p>\n
Despite being in a busy shopping area, nobody was injured.<\/p>\n
“Every explosion, it seemed like the flames got bigger,” said witness Robert Zedo.<\/p>\n
The video of the fire is so vivid that it almost doesn’t look real. Massive flames and a ball of orange just radiation in the lot. Around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, a woman was in her car before hearing a loud pop and seeing smoke. She then fled the car and called 911.<\/p>\n
“What I thought was just an overheating car, and I turned around, it was just white smoke coming towards me,” said Zedo.<\/p>\n
When fire crews arrived, they were met with the EV completely engulfed in flames, and they quickly began taking action to try to contain its spread.<\/p>\n
It’s not a common thing for electric vehicles to catch fire. But when they do, they pose a serious threat.<\/p>\n
“The batteries are the biggest challenge. The battery pack is under the car; they’re very difficult to get, and they don’t need oxygen to burn. So, we can drown it in water, and it can technically still burn,” said McCandless Fire Marshal Jeff Wissner.<\/p>\n
Wissner says those batteries even have the potential to catch fire weeks later. The best the fire crews can do is try to cool them down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are other concerns when batteries of electric vehicles catch fire.<\/p>\n
“The batteries also produce some really nasty gases like hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen fluoride, those you definitely don’t want to breathe in,” said Wissner.<\/p>\n
Wissner says a special nozzle that goes under cars and sprays water was used by a neighboring company to help knock out the fire. Not every department has special nozzles due to the hefty $3,000 price and the general lack of funding that fire departments face.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although with the increasing amount of EVs, Wissner says it’s likely that departments will start equipping them.<\/p>\n
“I think that’s something you’re going to start seeing more and more fire departments investing in just because there are more vehicles on the road and EV chargers around,” said Wissner.<\/p>\n