The Fire Safety Research Institute and the Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF) have issued an urgent safety advisory around a potential hazard involving fire blankets used for electric vehicle fire suppression efforts with battery involvement.

• During experiments involving the use of electric vehicle fire blankets to suppress an EV fire with battery involvement, it was observed that the deployment of a fire blanket eliminated flaming by denying oxygen to the vehicle and the battery fire.
• While the flaming was eliminated, battery thermal runaway propagation continued after blanket deployment, which resulted in the continued release and accumulation of flammable battery gases into the volume under the blanket
• In some of the experiments, this accumulation of flammable gases under the blankets presented an explosion risk to firefighters operating near the vehicle.
• The risk of an explosion can be increased when re-introducing air into an oxygen-depleted accumulation of unburned flammable battery gases.

Analysis of the data from FPRF experiments is underway. Preliminary results will be presented at the annual NFPA Conference and Expo on June 16, 2025 in Las Vegas and the full analysis will be provided in FPRF’s forthcoming research report, which will be publicly available this fall at nfpa.org/foundation. 

While EV Fire Blankets are desirable for the fire spread benefits they provide, It may make sense to hold off on this requirement of the membership until the results of this new study are released mid-june.

Community Legal Advisors Inc.

Mark T. Guithues