Planned Florida electric bus center poses new challenges, including potential EV fires

A lieutenant from a South Florida fire department says they are preparing for the opening of a planned transit operations center that will house 100 60-foot articulated battery-electric-buses, which poses a variety of new challenges. 

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue (MDFR) Lt. Mike Adams says the EV industry is changing so rapidly and is so new that departments are trying to keep up. The South Dade Transit Operations Center is set to house Miami-Dade County’s Metrobus fleet as early as next summer, with project completion slated for summer 2026. 

Adams said he and his team are as "equipped as we can be" for electric vehicle (EV) fires, which are more difficult to handle than standard car fires.

"They burn a lot hotter, a lot faster, and they take a lot more water to put out," Adams told FOX Business over the phone about EV fires, adding that a typical car fire takes about 300 to 400 gallons to put out, whereas an electric vehicle fire could take 10 times as much.

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MDFR firefighters are "constantly" getting new training and industry standards because there is no "silver bullet" to putting EV fires out. Along with taking more water, Adams said EV fires also take more time and labor to extinguish, which means greater cost. Most EV fires are just doused with water until they burn out on their own, he said. 

Adams said he is involved in state-level EV testing in an attempt to get some sort of standard operating procedure or policy for fire departments. 

While the EV fire trend is picking up, according to Adams they are still rare. 

In terms of the transit center, which Adams said is still in the design and engineering phase, many people are involved due to the lack of building codes specific for EV housing structures.

"An EV vehicle is a lot heavier than a regular car," Adams said. "You have to reinforce the building for structural, especially if it's goinna be like a parking garage where there's multiple floors. So you gotta re-engineer the building to handle the extra load, then you gotta re-engineer the electrical to handle the charging requirements for them, and then you have to do the same thing for automatic sprinklers and suppression systems on the fire side."

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When it comes to buses, Adams said the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the battery. Diagrams of the buses he has seen show the batteries on the roof, which creates height and access problems. 

Just last month, a driver crashed his Tesla in Texas before it caught fire. Video released by the Colony Police Department showed officers breaking a window to rescue the driver. 

Officers attempted to put the flames out, according to KLTV, but it kept reigniting. 

In June, what appears to be a newer Tesla Model 3 burned for two hours and took 45,000 gallons of water until it was put out, Panama City Beach Fire Rescue said on Facebook.

"The protective casing around the batteries suffered major damage causing thermal runaway," the post reads. Thermal runaway is "a chain reaction within a battery cell that can be very difficult to stop once it has started," Dragonfly Energy states.

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Adams said every carmaker is now in the EV business, and those choosing to hit the roads in them need to be aware of potential risks.

"Consumers have to be aware of their vehicles," he said. "They have to look for telltale signs of a failure. They have to use the right charging cords or charging stations. They have to watch out for damage, like running things over on the road. They have to be more aware that there is potential danger."