One of the most serious dangers of electric vehicles (EVs) that the government is not warning people about is the fire risk that their batteries pose. Thousands of weekend commuters found this out the hard way in the Mojave Desert over the weekend, when a tractor-trailer load of EV batteries wrecked near the town of Baker, California. Two major freeways between Los Angeles and Las Vegas were clogged at a near standstill from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon. Emergency crews were unable to put the resulting fire out with any of their existing equipment.
The tractor-trailer tipped over near Baker and the load of EV batteries caught fire. The fumes from a lithium-ion battery fire are toxic to humans and animals. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), an EV battery fire expels “hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen cyanide, organic solvents, ethane, methane, hydrocarbons, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides” and more. The fumes will kill you if you inhale them.
Traffic was brought to a complete stop between Baker and Barstow, which are about 60 miles apart. I-15 is the main freeway running between San Diego, East Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Fortunately, no one ever tries to go to Vegas for the weekend, amiright?
The entirety of the subsequent I-15 traffic was then diverted onto the eastbound I-40 freeway in Barstow. It’s a longer connecting route but taking I-40 east from Barstow and then Highway 95 north will still get you to Vegas. The extra volume of cars and trucks on I-40, however, caused that freeway to turn into a miserable slog as well. What is normally a two-hour drive between Barstow and Las Vegas turned into ten hours of hell on wheels.
Did we mention that this was in the Mojave Desert? In July? High temperatures were around 110 degrees and people on I-15 were stuck without water, food, or a Porta-Potty, as their cars ran out of gas from running the A/C.
Meanwhile, back at the EV battery fire…
Emergency crews had nothing capable of putting the fire out. They couldn’t push the truck off the road because that could cause an EV battery explosion. Water doesn’t do anything to a lithium-ion battery fire. Neither does the chemical retardant that they dump on forest fires to put them out. The only thing that emergency crews could do was push dirt up around the truck to prevent it from starting a wildfire in the desert scrub brush.
Because of the risk of the batteries exploding, they couldn’t let any traffic through to continue on their way to Las Vegas. One of the busiest freeways in America was shut down for an entire weekend. How much economic damage do you suppose it did to the country to completely shut down the freeway between Los Angeles and Vegas for almost 48 hours on the weekend? A billion dollars? More?
The painful reality of this EV pipe dream is that emergency crews are not equipped to put out these types of fires, which are surprisingly common. One person stuck in “Carmageddon” near the town of Baker uploaded a video of the experience on social media. Look at all the misery that an EV battery fire caused these people over the weekend.
A crisis situation is unfolding in the California desert. Thousands of people headed to Las Vegas have been stuck on the I-40 for many hours, running out of gas and water. This is all due to the lithium battery truck fire that closed down I-15 yesterday. pic.twitter.com/PnoQRzd4mX
— Las Vegas Locally 🌴 (@LasVegasLocally) July 27, 2024