Sedgwick County Commissioner David Dennis says he’s part of a new task force to figure out the infrastructure needed to support electric vehicles and keep firefighters safe.
Dennis says the current technology used to fight electric vehicle fires is expensive and requires a much larger amount of resources.
“On a gas fire, from the studies that I’ve seen, takes about 1,000 gallons of water to put that fire out. On an electric vehicle, in order to cool that battery down enough, it takes about 30,000 gallons of water,” Dennis said.
Commissioner Dennis says a process known as “thermal runaway” makes fighting lithium-ion battery fires much more difficult.
“So, if one cell out of all the hundreds of cells that are in this battery starts to overheat, then it transfers that heat to the next cell, and it’s just kind of a ripple effect,” Dennis said.