Battery on electric Wichita bus catches fire — the second lithium-ion battery fire in week

Lithium-ion batteries caused an electric Wichita city bus to catch fire early Wednesday morning, making it the second time in a week fire officials have attributed a damaging fire to such batteries.

The bus damage is estimated at $650,000.

Battalion chief Jose Ocadiz said this fire and a house fire last week are the only ones he knows of that have been determined to come from those batteries. It’s a growing problem nationwide, so much that it will be the topic during a national fire convention next month.

After fire and smoke incidents, electric bus is an anomaly, Wichita city officials say

Ocadiz said Wichita firefighters are in the early stages of learning how to properly fight these types of fires. Fire officials will be learning from Sedgwick County Emergency Management about the hazards and ways to extinguish those fires during a class Monday, he said.

“Being able to extinguish it is not as easy as just putting water on it,” he said.

Firefighters were called around 1:30 a.m. to the Wichita Transit maintenance building at 777 E. Waterman. Maintenance and security officials discovered the flames, which started on the batteries mounted on top of a bus.

The bus had been used during the day but wasn’t charging when it caught fire, city spokesperson Megan Lovely said.

Ocadiz said firefighters “doused the bus with a massive amount of water” and then maintenance officials helped get the bus out of the building once the batteries cooled enough.

A couple of windows on the building were destroyed by the fire, Lovely said, and the water firefighters used destroyed computers and tools in an office. The inside of the bus looked unscathed, she said, adding she didn’t know if the bus was destroyed.

The fire wasn’t hot enough to trigger the building’s sprinklers, she said.

The city has 11 electric buses, all paid for by federal grants, and 35 diesel buses. The fire would not impact bus routes, she said.

A May 11 fire in the 4700 block of North Cobblestone started when a person was charging a lithium-ion battery on their back deck, Ocadiz said, adding that the fire spread to the home and did “quite a bit of damage.” The only occupant was able to get out.

Fires from lithium-ion batteries have been blamed for causing injuries and deaths.

The lithium-ion battery on a scooter is blamed for causing a March fire in Bronx, New York, that injured at least seven people, according to USA Today. The batteries are common on scooters and electric bikes. The New York City Fire Department responded to at least 200 fires in 2022 on those types of vehicles that resulted in six deaths, according to the independent safety science organization UL Research Institutes.

After the Wichita house fire last week, fire officials said on social media to charge those batteries away from combustibles and to only use the batteries and charger that came with the item.

The batteries are also in phones and laptops. There have been incidents of them catching fire mid-flight. A CBS News investigation found that those incidents are happening more often. The investigation mentions an incident witnessed by a Wichita woman flying home with her son when a lithium-ion battery in a carry-on bag started smoking.

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