Fort Leonard Wood firefighters are using a newly equipped tool to fight fires that erupt in electric and hybrid vehicles. The brimstone fire blankets are designed to control a lithium-ion battery fire.

Assistant Fire Chief Michael Drozdo said electric and hybrid vehicle fires tend to last longer and are harder to put out compared to gas and diesel-powered ones.

“It takes a long time for those electric vehicle batteries to burn out because they’re made of hundreds of individual cells,” Drozdo said. “When one short circuits, it releases its energy very quickly, creating massive heat and then hundreds or thousands of cells releasing their energy simultaneously multiply that heat, making it exceedingly difficult to extinguish those flames.”

It’s a new type of technology for a new type of fire, which Drozdo said takes thousands of gallons of water to extinguish.

“The expansion of water to steam happens so fast during the heat of those batteries that it can’t keep up with that,” he said. “So, basically what this blanket does is it smothers it, alleviating the oxygen, making it easier to contain that fire.”

The blankets deprive the fire of oxygen, suppressing open flames, lowering the temperature, and decreasing the smoke volume. The smothering technique protects firefighters and greatly reduces the risk of bodily harm and property damage.

Drozdo said that his phone has been ringing off the hook by people requesting training demonstrations.

“The whole department of the Army caught wind of our little story and training that we did for our local newspaper, and it went clear to the Pentagon,” he said. “Who knows where it’s going to go from there. We’ve had some meetings with some higher-ranking officials and there’s a possibility that this will go Army, possibly DOD-wide.”

Firefighters at the south-central Missouri military base were the first in the region to receive the new fire-suppressing blankets.

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