So, GlobalTrvlr was nice enough to check in on us after the hurricane and drop this in my lap yesterday.
And you know, the timing is perfect – I need a break.
So let’s talk one of my favorite subjects – electric vehicle fires and lithium batteries.
Little did I know, in the middle of buying wingnuts, LP tanks, and yelling at major dad for forgetting the traditional hurricane wee bag of powdered mini donuts that it was ‘Fire Prevention Week.’
Not only that, but it turns out that the National Fire Prevention Association chooses a specific theme for the week each year. This year’s winner was none other than the goofy mouthful:
CHARGE INTO FIRE SAFETY: SAFE CHARGING IS A SUPERPOWER
Right? It sounds like something a kindergarten teacher comes up with for Parents’ Night.
In any event, that’s what they called it, and they planned to slap it all over events during the week of October 4-10.
Little did they know that there would be some super embarrassing events illustrating how the importance of charging safely makes it a superpower, or just being safe around EVs does, period.
It’s almost as if these uber-wired, uber-intelligent vehicles wanted to help out.
It started in a big way on Friday night, 9 October. The scene was a Cadillac lot in Fort Worth, Texas, and believe you me – it was a car-b-que, all right, but on a Texas oilman’s budget.
…On Friday night, six electric vehicles believed to be GM CEO Mary Barra’s prized Cadillac Escalade IQs, which can easily cost more than $100,000, caught fire at a dealership in Fort Worth, Texas. Two additional vehicles were damaged.
The ensuing inferno took local firefighters more than 17 hours to extinguish.
🚨 BREAKING: MULTIPLE EVs ON FIRE IN FORT WORTH Fort Worth FD is battling multiple electric vehicle fires at Frank Kent Cadillac on W. Loop 820. Heavy smoke reported. Avoid the area! https://t.co/Ro6Pw7CdoZ
— DFW BREAKING NEWS (@DFWNEWS911) October 10, 2026
Almost 18 hours and rotating crews of firefighters through the night before they got those suckers doused for good.
Firefighters spent nearly 18 hours extinguishing a blaze at a Cadillac dealership in Texas that immolated six electric vehicles. The fire filled the skies above Frank Kent Cadillac in Fort Worth with thick black smoke, but resulted in no injuries and didn’t spread to surrounding property, the dealership said. The incident began around 5 p.m. Oct. 9, and the Fort Worth Fire Department said it rotated crews every two hours throughout the night until it could leave the scene at 10:28 the next morning. “One of the issues with electric vehicles is that they have the potential to burn much hotter than an average fire,” the department said in a Facebook post. “The batteries of these vehicles are built to be completely sealed off. That is incredibly helpful when trying to protect the vehicle from daily driving conditions. But it presents a complex set of issues for firefighters when they are attempting to extinguish these fires. The vehicles are deliberately built not to let water in.” #EV #EVs #electricvehicles #EVfires #automotive #autoindustry
— Automotive News (@Automotive_News) October 14, 2026
…but resulted in no injuries and didn’t spread to surrounding property, the dealership said.
The incident began around 5 p.m. Oct. 9, and the Fort Worth Fire Department said it rotated crews every two hours throughout the night until it could leave the scene at 10:28 the next morning.
“One of the issues with electric vehicles is that they have the potential to burn much hotter than an average fire,” the department said in a Facebook post. “The batteries of these vehicles are built to be completely sealed off. That is incredibly helpful when trying to protect the vehicle from daily driving conditions. But it presents a complex set of issues for firefighters when they are attempting to extinguish these fires. The vehicles are deliberately built not to let water in.”
It started with one EV, as these often do, and spread.
Six brand new EVs on fire at the same time, and, as Pat from StacheD says in his video on the incident, it’s the first time the Ft. Worth Fire Department has had to deal with an incident of that magnitude.
He has amazing video of the fire, too.
He posits that, as the FWFD used fire blankets on the vehicles, the water they were pouring on them was more to keep the toxic smoke cloud contained so it would not move across the highway and into that nearby neighborhood.
As to the cause of this horrifically expensive, but luckily not tragic fire, Pat says there’s no indication yet, but there is an active recall on those IQ batteries, which are in other GM vehicles as well. ‘Apparently they are not being assembled quite right.’
He also gets into the challenges of disposing of those destroyed vehicles. It’s an educational five minutes.
These batteries are also ‘massive,’ which compounds the issues with fighting fires and disposal.
…In his video on the Texas EV eruption, Durham speculates that the six vehicles destroyed were electric Cadillac Escalades based on the images he reviewed. GM Authority subsequently reported that video footage suggests most, if not all, were Escalade IQs, which are equipped with a massive 205-kWh battery pack.
Now let me channel Billy Mays:
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
The very next evening, Saturday of Safe Charging Superpower Week?
Fourteen EVs go up in flames on a Broken Arrow, Oklahoma dealer’s lot.
…Less than 24 hours later, another dealership fire erupted in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, involving 14 electric vehicles. Five sustained extensive fire damage, while nine suffered heat damage. The dealership has GMC, Kia, and Subaru franchises.
A fire at a Broken Arrow dealership spread to 14 electric vehicles Saturday evening, heavily damaging five of them. BAFD say the fire is under control. More information: https://t.co/GJgDuqfga4
— Tulsa’s News Pulse | KTUL (@KTULNews) October 11, 2026
This is piling on, guys.
And, again, Pat has some video you won’t find elsewhere.
Every vehicle involved in the fire was electric, and the fire department moved the other vehicles away to prevent it from spreading. Excellent work on their part.
As Pat notes, five of the vehicles were ‘thermally damaged, which is critical information, because if enough heat got into the battery pack to compromise it, there could well be trouble down the road with that pack spontaneously combusting. That’s the trouble with EVs. They’re very finicky.
And in this case, there’s no indication of the cause as of yet, but suspicions are swirling around the GM battery issue.
GM EV sales look as if they’ve been smothered with a blanket, and this news surely will not help.
…Unsold EVs are piling up on GM dealer lots.
GM electric-vehicle sales in the United States plummeted more than 62 percent during the third quarter of 2026, despite the software-enabled vehicle manufacturer expanding its EV portfolio across several brands.
As reported by GM Authority, an independent trade publication, GM sold 25,213 EVs in the United States during Q3 2026, compared with 66,501 units during the same period in 2025.
Only 3.2 percent of GM’s sales were EVs.
Barra previously committed that all of GM’s vehicles would be EVs by 2035, a goal she has repeatedly reiterated is her “north star.”
The Cadillac Escalade IQ, the supposed crown jewel of Barra’s electric luxury ambitions, isn’t exactly setting the sales charts ablaze.
Escalade IQ sales declined 29.2 percent in the third quarter, from 2,264 vehicles a year earlier to 1,604.
And as one should always point out in the interest of fairness, it’s not the number of EV fires, it’s what it takes to put them out and the dangers inherent in the fires themselves.
…Before EV enthusiasts accuse me of spreading misinformation, let’s acknowledge something important: Available international data indicate electric vehicles catch fire considerably less frequently than gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. Studies cited by the European Commission have found substantially lower fire rates for EVs, a finding supported by data from EV-heavy Norway and Sweden.
But there’s a catch.
When EV batteries do ignite, firefighters can face a particularly nasty challenge. Lithium-ion batteries can experience thermal runaway, generating intense heat, toxic gases, and the risk of reignition even after firefighters believe they’ve extinguished the flames.
For example, the batteries in the Ft Worth fire reignited several times over the course of the evening.
In any event, that was a heckuva way to polish off Safe Charging Is A Superpower Week, no?
Oh, the irony.
Sometimes these things write themselves.
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