Our news and tip lines lit up Tuesday afternoon as a plume of thick, black smoke began to billow up out of remote Hunsaker Canyon in Lafayette on Tuesday.
Early reports are that a pair of electric vehicles and a charging station caught fire in the 100 block of Hunsaker Canyon Road, spreading to adjacent brushland and bringing fire crews on the run.
No structures burned despite a “Residential Fire” designation on local fire emergency web sites, though the two cars involved – at first reports described as Teslas – continued to burn stubbornly, requiring a Fire Watch by crews kept on to ensure no further fires erupted.
The fire was reported a little after noon and there were no immediate reports of injuries. An investigator is on scene.
Lucky there was no wind up today.
Thanks for those alerts!!!!!!
Busy much nesws24?
Just a little!
They were lucky.
Can’t find anyone to tow them out of the Canyon.
If EVs are our future, and they are…I think some regulatory thought experiments would be a good idea before we have a residential charger in every other residence and INTENSE residential fires amongst us on a regular, predictable basis. Let us collect safety data on all of these battery makers and rate them for safety and ability to financially cover liability for quality failures, i.e. fires. I suspect that few would meet that challenge currently, and if we plunge headlong into this future without quality controls and basic information on safety, we are going to reap a whirlwind of residential fires and take action after the fact, as would be the usual path.
A couple of Teslas?
Yes.
No more of these please.