By Donald Gilpin

This Friday, March 1, the Princeton Fire Department (PFD) will be adding a valuable piece of equipment to its toolkit of resources used in fighting fires. In a 10:30 a.m. presentation at the Princeton Firehouse on Witherspoon Street across from the Municipal Building, Polestar of Princeton, a Swedish electric vehicle manufacturer, will be donating an electric vehicle fire blanket to the PFD and demonstrating how to use it.

“This looks like an excellent tool to safely extinguish an EV vehicle fire,” said Princeton Department of Emergency and Safety Services Director Michael Yeh. “When an EV vehicle is on fire, firefighters would cover the vehicle with the blanket, effectively covering the vehicle and depriving it of air while smothering the fire.”

“Entering this electric age of EV cars, I’ve been talking to a lot of fire chiefs in the area,” said Polestar General Manager Nick Long, who initiated fire blanket donations to area fire departments more than a year ago. “They told me they are not fully prepared for the era that we’re about to enter, so I did some research and found these fire blankets, and we started donating them.” Polestar, which is owned by Volvo, has donated 14 so far to fire departments in the Philadelphia area. The Robbinsville Fire Department was a recent recipient, and Lawrence Township and Hopewell Township are slated for future donations after Princeton.

Long, who is part of a regional EV task force, pointed out that the blankets are designed to give first responders the tools and the time they need to control the fire and not waste water in putting out the fires.

“When an EV battery catches on fire, when lithium catches fire, it’s very hard to put out,” he said. “These blankets can control the fire so that first responders can remove the car from the situation.” He added that gasoline-powered vehicles are more prone to vehicle fires than EVs, but EV fires last longer, are harder to put out, and often reignite. The priority for Long and Polestar is to provide firefighters with all the necessary tools and training.

There were 1,530 fires per 100,000 sales for gasoline vehicles and just 25 fires per 100,000 sales for electric vehicles, according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the National Transportation Safety Board fire and crash data.

Christopher Santone, battalion chief of C Platoon of the Mount Laurel Fire Department, which received a fire blanket donated from Polestar two weeks ago, noted that his department has been trying out the fire blanket in some basic training exercises. He noted that the blanket is big enough to cover a pick-up truck but since the blanket is for one-time use, they haven’t yet tried it out on a burning vehicle.

Santone explained, “The blanket contains the fire. I wouldn’t say it suffocates it. Once you have contained it, you choose to either leave it or haul it — put it on a flatbed and tow it. EV fires are different. The batteries can burn for hours, and we have to be prepared for these high risk, low frequency events.”

He continued, “Like any other first responder we like to have a large toolbox with a variety of equipment that can help us in any incident. We’re fortunate and thankful to Nick and Polestar for donating that blanket to us.”

The blanket that the PFD will receive on Friday is a Bridgehill Car Fire Blanket, Yeh noted. It is described on the Bridgehill website as “the original car fire blanket — the most efficient way to isolate and extinguish car fires, even in electric vehicles.”

The description continues, “Any car fire is dangerous and toxic. A car fire in a gas station, road tunnel, car park, or passenger ferry can be a disaster. The Bridgehill Car Fire Blanket enables you to contain the flames, smoke, and toxic fumes in a car fire in seconds. It’s the only solution that can effectively handle fires in electric vehicles.”

Made of pyroxene with polymer silicone coating, the blanket measures about 20 by 26 feet with a weight of about 62 pounds. The cost for each one-time-use EV blanket is about $1,300, Long said.