More Than 100 Firefighters Battle Hazardous Fire At General Motors In Pasadena - Beritaja

More than 100 firefighters and a hazardous materials squad are moving to combat a occurrence involving lithium ion batteries and prototype cars astatine General Motor’s creation workplace successful Pasadena, authorities said.

At 1 point, a firefighter was trapped successful the building amid the ferocious blaze and sent retired a May Day call.

The Pasadena Fire Department responded to the occurrence successful the 600 artifact of Sierra Madre Villa Avenue astatine 5:50 p.m., according to section spokesperson Lisa Derderian. The incident was declared a four-alarm occurrence — signifying a catastrophic blaze that requires the mobilization of important occurrence section resources — owed to the standard of the building and the hazardous materials involved.

“This is 1 of the largest building fires we’ve had successful Pasadena successful many, galore years,” said Derderian.

Preliminary reports indicated that some lithium ion batteries and conception cars burned wrong the building; however, the incident remains active, and the origin of the occurrence is nether investigation, she said. Some of the burned cars appeared to beryllium gasoline-powered vehicles.

It took firefighters much than an hr to way down the root of the blaze arsenic heavy fume engulfed the 149,000-square-foot campus. General Motors invested much than $71 million successful 2021 to build the three-building installation arsenic a caller guidelines for its Advanced Design Center.

The blaze is challenging to combat arsenic crews cannot usage h2o to extinguish lithium ion artillery fires. Doing truthful could origin a destabilizing chemic reaction, starring much batteries to drawback occurrence aliases explode.

“Firefighters connected segment person trained successful scenarios for illustration this, but it does put a different twist connected extinguishing fires,” Derderian said.

Large lithium ion artillery fires could return respective hours aliases moreover days to render safe.

When 1 artillery compartment overheats, it could trigger a concatenation guidance wherever adjacent cells besides overheat. This guidance releases power and toxic gases and could proceed heavy wrong the artillery battalion agelong aft visible flames are put out.

There was a May Day telephone erstwhile a firefighter became trapped wrong the fire-engulfed building Wednesday evening. But occurrence crews were capable to find him and propulsion him retired of the building without injuries.

“He did not wish to beryllium transported [to a hospital], but it was a very scary fewer minutes location until they wished that he was OK,” Derderian said.

Fire crews are searching the full field to guarantee location is nary 1 other trapped inside, she said. Crews will stay connected segment overnight arsenic they proceed to woody pinch the hazardous materials progressive successful the blaze.