Emergency services personnel continue to be challenged now more than ever with a changing fire environment. We have seen firsthand how building construction, contents, and building materials can profoundly affect firefighters’ work environment.
Our communities are becoming increasingly impacted with complex and at times fatal fire incidents where the cause is related to batteries powering mobility devices such as e-bikes and e-scooters. The fire service response is further complicated by the challenges that result from incidents that occur with battery-powered electric vehicles or energy storage systems.
Our citizens depend on the expertise of the fire service to respond to these incidents. In addition, communities must understand how to prepare our built environment as the manufacturing process changes to support these growing industries and technologies.
The power of the IAFC is and always has been its membership. Over the last year, the Safety and Health Section and Fire and Life Safety Section joined forces to provide resources to IAFC members in preparing for these incidents. The workgroup produced multiple resource guides and webinars which are some of the most requested resources of the IAFC.
The group includes nearly 30 members of the IAFC working to create a lithium-ion tool kit that will aid the fire service in not only preparing our organizations for response to incidents involving lithium-ion batteries, but provide tools for community risk reduction efforts, building and fire code best practices as well as general information on associated equipment such as building and community charging. This tool kit is set to be released by the end of February.
Today the IAFC is excited to announce a dedicated page for current resources to lithium-ion battery responses at Lithium-Ion and Energy Storage Systems. Please visit the new resource page dedicated to lithium-ion batteries and discover the resources available for your community and organization to prepare to battle against our changing fire environment.
Lithium-Ion and Energy Storage Systems