A truck full of lithium-ion batteries is burning in Los Angeles, closing ports and a bridge. It’s unclear what the batteries were for, but Los Angeles’ Vincent Thomas Bridge, which leads to the Port of Los Angeles and the nearby Port of Long Beach, has been closed for at least 15 hours while local firefighters let the truck burn. State Route 47 was also closed in both directions a couple of hours ago.
Surprisingly, a local towing company caught the explosion on a nearby drone camera:
Both the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach have closed several terminals as the fire continues. As of 12:10 p.m. PT on Friday, the truck was still on fire and both the ports and the bridge remained closed, said Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) spokesman Ren Medina. The edge.
Firefighters are nearby and actively monitoring the situation; starting at 10 pm PT on Thursday, The fire was expected to last “at least another 24-48 hours.”
As we’ve seen with several electric vehicle battery fires, large concentrated lithium battery fires can be very difficult to put out: sometimes firefighters douse them with thousands of gallons of water only to watch the fire restart as it burns. the extra battery cells heat up to the point that they burn out. Once a cell gets hot enough, it is said to go into “thermal runaway,” at which point it can sometimes restart a fire. The LAFD confirms that this is a case of thermal runaway.
The EV packs are particularly full of cells, but we don’t yet know if they were involved here: The Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson says it’s unclear who owns the truck, much less what it was hauling. The LAFD could only confirm that they are lithium-ion batteries at this time.
Pepe’s Towing Service owner Josh Acosta, who filmed the explosion with his drone, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But he apparently plans to post more footage: “The full video on YouTube is going to be crazy!!!” he wrote.
Umar Shakir contributed to this story.