LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Throughout Wednesday, smoke was still billowing into the sky from Townsite Solar, the site of a large fire Tuesday night.
The source of the fire was a lithium battery unit, keeping Boulder City Fire crews busy throughout the night Tuesday.
Boulder City Fire Chief Kenneth Morgan told FOX 5 that these types of fires are rare to see.
“It’s one of those things that you know around the country they’ve had fires and energy storage systems so we kind of know what’s going to happen,” Chief Morgan said.
“They’re kind of rare too at the same time because they’re so well monitored, so well taken care of that a fire in one’s kind of unusual. We do a lot of training preparation for it because we do have some fairly large facilities here with the energy storage batteries.”
While he never thought that he’d have to respond to a lithium battery fire of this scale, Morgan’s crew has been trained on proper protocol, given that lithium fires can’t simply be extinguished.
The fire chief described creating a protective perimeter around the fire to keep the surrounding battery units safe from spreading flames.
When it came to challenges fighting this fire, the first thing Chief Morgan mentioned was the amount of water used.
“We at one point were putting between 1200-1500 gallons a minute,” Chief Morgan said.
“The fact that there was a good water supply, our fire prevention division made sure that there was good hydrants out there.”
Morgan said without a reliable hydrant, they would have had to shuttle water back and forth with tankers which would have lost them precious time in containing this fire.
It was very much a waiting game, allowing the fire to burn itself out, which took longer after a second battery in the unit caught fire.
“There are two banks in each pod and they’re separated by six inches. An exposure that is that close to something that is burning very well, it’s almost impossible to keep out of it.”
With smoke and embers expected to last until Thursday, Chief Morgan is grateful his crew was prepared to put this fire out and hope it leads to other departments being ready for more lithium based fires like this in the future.
“That’s been one of our fears that one of these things go up, and we’re going to see a lot more of these before too awfully long. There’s already plans for more of them coming in,” Chief Morgan said.
“So the fact that we have a plan, the fact that we know that we can execute it, we know that it works, played in our favor. The fact that there was a good water supply, our fire prevention division made sure that there was good hydrants out there. Anticipating something like this. The water supply was there which was one of the biggest factors that we had.”
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