Lithium ion battery fires create stubborn problems for Colorado firefighters

A fire in Aurora on Thursday was yet another in less than a week that had firefighters working to try to extinguish lithium battery fires. A townhome on Aurora's South Ensenada Street had heavy damage from a fire that had firefighters removing and packaging batteries from model RC cars.

It followed an incident on Tuesday at an apartment at 8250 East Harvard Ave. that had South Metro Firefighters hustling to pull an electric scooter outside, where they immersed it in a bucket that contained a mineral-glass mixture.

Over the weekend, a car fire at a charging station on West Littleton Boulevard in Littleton meant the evacuation of people from the area around it due to hazardous smoke.

Putting water on the fires is ineffective and even causes problems of its own.

"Because of the way they're packaged in that battery. There's no way for that water to absorb into that flame and actually extinguish that fire," said South Metro Fire Public Information Officer Matthew Assell. "The way that the fire burns and the heat and the temperature that they burn at make it where water doesn't work on these fires."

"We won't actually put water on those unless it's threatening something nearby," explained South Metro firefighter Joe Douglass. "We've found that that actually causes other toxic gases to be created. It also causes an issue with the runoff. Running into the sewers, the streams, etcetera."

Pinning down the cause of the ignition of the fires can be difficult. It could come from charging, over-charging, damaged batteries, or those with defects in addition to the use of equipment that's a poor after-market match for battery charging.

"We're encountering things that we've never encountered before. At least in the Hazmat side in the fire service," said Douglass. And it poses new risks too. Firefighters who work in the smoke with South Metro turn in their suits to have them cleaned of hazardous substances. They come off in layers. If some layers cannot be effectively cleaned, they have to be discarded.

"This is kind of a whole new animal. It's in a ballpark of its own with what it's causing. The issues it's causing, the possible cancers and things like that," said Douglass.