JAMESTOWN — Firefighters, law enforcement officers and emergency medical personnel from the area gathered in Jamestown last week for specialized training aimed at preparing first responders for incidents involving electric vehicles.

“From our perspective in North Dakota, we know they (electric and hybrid electric vehicles) are here,” said Brian Paulson, fire chief for the Jamestown Rural Fire Department. “We’ve had a real low frequency of interfacing with electric vehicles on calls. So it’s one of those low-frequency, high-risk scenarios for us.”

Paulson said the Jamestown Rural Fire Department has responded to two incidents involving hybrid-electric vehicles where the battery had to be disabled.

First responders participated in two four-hour courses taught by Vehicle Response Training out of Minnesota on April 28-29 that focused on identifying electric vehicles (EV), which include battery-electric, hybrid-electric, plug-in hybrid-electric, and fuel cell electric vehicles.

The Vehicle Response Training staff taught participants about solar and how that inverts, solar storage, gasses from batteries and how to identify them, thermal imaging and how to look at temperatures from a battery, cabling, how prismatic cells work in vehicles and different types of batteries in EVs. Vehicle Response Training brought a couple EVs, different types of batteries and disassembled parts from EVs.

“Everything we do in the fire service is basically risk versus reward,” said Aaron Sour, chief operating officer for Vehicle Response Training. “So keeping ourselves safe is our No. 1 priority in order to obviously help the general public and our customers and our citizens, but it’s really understanding how they operate, identifying these vehicles as soon as we can and we teach highly on life safety and so trying to keep the general public safe while utilizing the tools that we often overlook that we already carry on our fire engines, just using them a little bit differently.”

The staff also talks about available specialty tools and equipment for responding to incidents involving EVs.

“We can actually talk good, bad and otherwise about some of the risks associated with some of the equipment … that is available now to departments,” said Greg Downer, vice president for Vehicle Response Training.

Vehicle Response Training staff teaches about lithium battery products, said Jesse Ruhmann, owner of Vehicle Response Training. He said there are a lot of lithium products that first responders need to think of, including battery storage units, locomotives, forklifts, tractors, scooters and electric bikes.

“Everything nowadays is going to lithium ion for power instead of gasoline or regular battery, alkaline lead acid batteries,” he said. “They’re converting everything.”

About 5.5% of vehicles on the road are EVs, Ruhmann said

“That’s expected to go up exponentially in the next five years due to the drop in the cost to purchase an electric vehicle,” he said.

Downer said there are more than 100 full battery-electric vehicles plus more hybrid-electric vehicles.

“I think just at the end of the day, we see fire departments responding to these without training just as they responded to the last vehicle that was gas powered,” Ruhmann said. “There’s a whole different procedure that we recommend to get these things to minimize our risk to the responders.”

Paulson said 79 participants from nine agencies attended the training that was supported through donations from the Eagles Club, Progress Enterprises and the Knights of Columbus. Jamestown Rural Fire Department, Jamestown Fire Department, Stutsman County Sheriff’s Office, Sanborn Fire Department, Cleveland Rural Fire District, Carrington Fire Department and Jamestown Area Ambulance participated in the training.

Paulson said the goal of the EV response training is to help first responders better understand the mechanics of EVs, what dangers exist and procedures when responding to incidents involving EVs.

“It really raised our awareness with this training for the firefighters that are taking this training, and law enforcement, and all the first responders, medical providers as well,” he said.

He said the technology is advancing but emergency response training for EVs has not kept pace.

“None of this training is being driven by any regulatory industry,” he said.

Sour said incidents involving EVs that first responders respond to include anything fire related, crashes, water submersion or a structure fire with an EV inside.

Ruhmann said first responders need to identify the type of vehicle it is when responding to an incident involving EVs.

‘It’s extremely challenging to even identify these vehicles,” he said. “Manufacturers are doing a good job of hiding the identity of an electric vehicle. Stereotypically, they appear to be a certain way, but we prove differently in our training. I think first responders don’t understand that there’s a lot more models out there on the road than what we think.”

Sour said Vehicle Response Training staff pushes using emergency response guides for EVs. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has those guides available for 654 EVs.

“We really push that in order to identify where those high voltage parts are,” he said. “By doing that, it allows us to see where the battery location is.”

He said identifying the battery and high-voltage parts allows first responders to make sure they are not cutting into high-voltage wires if the vehicle needs to be cut.

“We want to make sure we’re cutting in the right places and not cutting into high voltage wires into battery parts and obviously take that situation and make it worse,” Sour said.

Paulson said a different approach is needed for vehicle stabilization as well. He said vehicle stabilization struts cannot be put under EVs with battery banks under the entire undercarriage.

Ruhmann said the biggest risk for responding to EV incidents is an off-gassing or damaging the battery and making the situation worse.

Downer said batteries in a confined space can become an explosive hazard because they can produce a “combustible cocktail” of gasses.

“It’s a byproduct of that chemical reaction when that (battery) cell fails,” he said

Sour said another issue that could come up is battery corrosion from salt being used on highways. He said some EVs that were in salt water from hurricanes came to the Midwest and started on fire a couple months later once the battery had enough corrosion.

Paulson said once first responders know they are dealing with lithium batteries and storage, the standard operating procedure will be similar to responding to other similar incidents without those components.

“You’re probably gonna have the same approach of take a step back, make sure we’re monitoring our air around us and just take some extra safety steps that you don’t normally take with a combustion engine,” he said.

Ruhmann said there are case studies where EVs can start on fire after they are involved in crashes and other cases where the battery is compromised and don’t start on fire.

“Nothing’s consistent so we can’t just train on the same thing every time because they all do different things, and a lot of the batteries are all just a little bit different,” he said.