MILFORD, Conn. — All week long, the Milford Fire Department has been training its members on how to respond to a car fire. The training is serving not only as a refresher course for veteran first responders but also to teach a new class of about 30 people who have joined the department within the last two years.
“We have a good stretch of I-95. We have a good stretch of Rt. 15. We have the feeder that connects the two and we have a good chunk of the Boston Post Rd. We respond to these auto fires, these vehicle fires, on a pretty regular basis,” said Adam Hansen, Battalion Chief with the Milford Fire Dept.
For those recently joining the department, Hansen said this experience will prepare them for the inevitable.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh it’s just a car fire, it’s just a vehicle fire. There’s a lot of inherent hazards that people don’t know about,” Hansen said.
Some of those hazards include magnesium in the cars and in most cases, gasoline. Hansen said the way gas tanks are manufactured now, has complicated and changed their response to those calls.
“Now, we not only have the problem of a car fire, now we have a flammable liquid fire that we have to deal with too. And it’s a very hazardous part about how we’re responding to fires in 2023 up on the highway,” Hansen said.
Senior Fire Inspector for Milford Fire, Mark LaBrecque, said the fumes from car fires also pose a risk to anyone responding or nearby.
“There’s magnesium in the cars, that can go off. The tires themselves can pop, the windows can blow out, so yeah, it’s a good safe practice to keep yourself away from the vehicle,” LaBrecque said.
And with electric vehicles taking over the roadway, Hansen said the parts are more flammable and the fire lasts longer than a fire in a car powered by gasoline.
“These EV fires, they will continue to burn for days and once we cover it with that blanket, it buys us time to say, get it off the highway, get it to an open parking lot,” Hansen said. “The batteries, once they get going, they just kind of keep burning and they can at times actually create their own oxygen source.”
At that point, Hansen said if they were responding to the fire on a highway where their only source of water is coming from the truck, they’d quickly run out of water.
“The amount of water to put these EV fires out is astronomical,” Hansen said.
For that reason, Milford Fire is using a fire blanket in their training, to prepare for their first encounter with an EV fire.
“We’re trying to be, instead of reactive, we’re trying to be proactive. And this isn’t just a problem in Milford, CT, this is a problem throughout the state, the country, and the world,” Hansen said.
Therefore, he knows it’s not a matter of if, but when they’ll have to put this training into practice.
“There’s a few hundred thousand vehicles that pass through Milford every day on our highways and byways. And it’s going to happen eventually, and we would rather be prepared by having a tool like this in our toolbox,” Hansen said.
Julia LeBlanc is a reporter at FOX61 News. She can be reached at jleblanc@fox61.com Follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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