{"id":97180,"date":"2026-05-04T13:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T13:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/97180\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T13:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T13:34:09","slug":"israels-fire-commissioner-says-electric-vehicle-fires-cant-be-put-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/97180\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel’s fire commissioner says electric vehicle fires can\u2019t be put out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel’s firefighters are unequipped to put out fires in electric vehicles, the Israeli\u00a0Fire and Rescue<\/a>\u00a0(IFR) Commissioner, Rabbi Eyal Caspi, said at\u00a0the main fire safety conference of the Association for the Promotion of Fire Safety in Israel on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn electric vehicle cannot be turned off, period,\u201d Caspi said, explaining the safety issues associated with handling fires in\u00a0electric vehicles<\/a> with lithium-ion batteries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said that while the Israeli Fire Department (IFD) has a special protocol for initial actions when an electric vehicle fire<\/a> is detected early, the method can only contain the incident and prevent the spread of fire, not extinguish a fire caused by battery thermal runaway.<\/p>\n

Thermal runaway in lithium-ion batteries<\/a> is a rapid, uncontrollable, self-heating chain reaction caused by overheating, overcharging, or physical damage. It happens when the battery generates heat faster than it can dissipate it, causing temperatures to exceed 600\u00b0C – releasing toxic, flammable gases and resulting in fires or explosions.<\/p>\n

The IFD response procedure uses fire blankets and water jets to prevent the spread of fire, but, as the IFR Commissioner pointed out, they are not intended to extinguish the flames. The Commissioner explained that the large number of electric vehicle models poses an additional safety risk, as each model has distinct vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

\"AA display of new firefighting vehicles outside the Knesset, the Israeli parliament on December 31, 2013. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL)<\/p>\n

These include places where the firefighters cannot cut into the car during a rescue, due to the risk of high-voltage electrocution.<\/p>\n

He told the conference that untrained people should not perform these operations due to the extreme risks of injury from the fire, gases emitted, and electric shocks if done incorrectly.<\/p>\n

Risks of thermal runaway in confined spaces<\/p>\n

The risks increase in underground parking garages. As these fires cannot be extinguished, the garage can quickly fill with dangerous smoke, potentially trapping people trying to get to their cars.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in an elevator, if the lithium battery in an electric bicycle or scooter catches on fire, it takes only 17 seconds for the elevator car to fill with smoke and become a death trap for all inside.<\/p>\n

The same can happen in train cars. Caspi noted that Israel Railways had begun an advertising campaign encouraging passengers to charge their electric bikes and scooters on trains, but the IFR shut it down because the risk of thermal runaway increases during charging.<\/p>\n

Going forward, the IFR will publish an updated procedure for handling electric vehicles to prevent the public from endangering themselves in futile attempts to extinguish fires caused by thermal runaway in lithium-ion batteries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel’s firefighters are unequipped to put out fires in electric vehicles, the Israeli\u00a0Fire and Rescue\u00a0(IFR) Commissioner, Rabbi Eyal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[27099,3779,26836,37,1835,33468],"class_list":{"0":"post-97180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-electric-cars","9":"tag-fire","10":"tag-firefighter","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-israel-fire-and-rescue-authority","13":"tag-israel-railways"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116516570009004093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}