Electric vehicles offer many advantages over fossil-fuel cars, but they do have one big drawback: their batteries can catch fire.

Under certain conditions, lithium-ion batteries can malfunction and go into "thermal runaway," a vicious cycle that pushes the temperature higher and higher. The result? An uncontrolled chemical fire feeding on 1,000 pounds of toxic fuel.

Unfortunately, these fires are extremely difficult to put out, because they occur inside a sealed steel battery compartment. This puts firefighters in a dilemma:

• They can spray water on the compartment to cool it down, but that doesn't stop the chemical reaction. The compartment soon heats up again and often reignites.
• They can pry open the compartment and flood it with water, but that releases a plume of poisonous gas and floods the roadway with toxic chemicals.

"These battery fires pose a significant threat to our responders," says Rick Graves, public information officer with Portland Fire & Rescue. "Battery fires need a lot more water to extinguish than other types of fires. They have high levels of toxins. And they have aerosolized particulates in the smoke that can lead to respiratory distress and even respiratory arrest."

Now help is on the way. Portland firefighters have been training with a new piece of equipment known as the Cold Cut Cobra water lance. The lance uses a high-pressure jet of water and grit to drill a tiny hole through the battery compartment. (You could just about fit a strand of linguine through it.)

Once the hole is complete, the lance fills the compartment with water, putting out the fire and trapping the toxins inside.

"That means less smoke, less fumes, and a much better situation for our responders and the public," Graves says.

PF&R worked together with the City's Bureau of Fleet and Facilities, with funding from the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF), to support the equipment and training for the new system, which will be housed on Heavy Squad 24 in the Overlook Neighborhood. This location provides excellent access to I-5 and surface streets.

The system can also be deployed against for large structure fires that use lithium-ion battery banks for power sources and storage.

"We're grateful to our partners at CityFleet and support from the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund for this tool," says Graves. "This will improve our response capabilities and reduce the environmental impacts of lithium-ion battery fires in electric vehicles."