With thousands of more folks buying electric vehicles training is essential for firefighters to fight a different, very dangerous type of battery fire. 
 
In Columbus, that training has already started.

But there has been no statewide plan so far for educating firefighters.
 
21 News sought out a local fire chief about what fire crews and EV owners should know.
 
Electrical vehicle fires happen less often than in gasoline-powered vehicles, but when they do catch fire the Lithium-ion battery in E-V's are much more difficult to put out.
 
 A gasoline-powered vehicle can typically be extinguished in minutes with around 500,  to one thousand gallons of water while EV battery fires can take hours and thousands of gallons of water.
 
Your common fire extinguisher or foam many fire departments carry isn't effective either.
 
"There are no easy ways to put out an electric vehicle fire. First of all, you can't get to the batteries that are typically on fire, and even if you can get to them water doesn't put them out. You have to have tens of thousands of gallons of water to put the batteries out and we don't carry that," said Fire Chief of the Western Reserve Joint Fire District David Comstock.
 
Fire Chief David Comstock adds even when you put an EV lithium-ion battery out, the batteries are still energized and can reignite.
 
Our NBC affiliate in Sacramento KCRA reported June of this year fire crews turned an EV on its side to reach the batteries underneath the vehicle, but they kept re-igniting so they put the car in a makeshift pit filled with water and used about 4,500 gallons of water to stop the blaze. 
 
Some EV fires were stopped by submerging the car in a pool, or by use of cement.
 
Sand does help put EV fires out, but no departments carry trucks of sand, and most people don't have sand readily available in the quantity needed to put out a lithium-ion battery fire in an EV car or truck or an EV bus.
 
Firefighters at the Western Reserve Joint Fire District say all homeowners should have smoke detectors on every level of their house, and in their garage. 
 
21 News the Assistant Fire Chief if he would park a vehicle or EV in an attached garage.
 
"Fires in conventional cars are much more common, much easier to put out, fires in electrical vehicles yes they are rare, but they tend to be more severe so it's kind of a give and take on what you want. It's a homeowner's decision on what they want to do, and I would always be cognizant of the fact what type of vehicle I have, where I want to put it, and where I want to store it to make the safest choice possible," Assistant Fire Chief of the Western Reserve Joint Fire District Timothy Clavin said.
 
EV fires can start from the battery cell shorting. A chain reaction called thermal runaway can happen when the battery generates more heat than it can dissipate.
 
Lithium-ion batteries can burn much hotter and longer than gasoline.
 
An EV fire in Texas required more than 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish after a crash, according to the National Fire Protection Association.
 
The national average is one fire per 19 million miles driven. 
 
Tesla has previously released data suggesting one fire for every 205 million miles which means there are far fewer EV fires. 
 
Government data show vehicles that use gasoline are 100 times more common but although EV fires are less common they can cause more problems. 
 
In Florida, almost a dozen submerged EVs caught fire after saltwater flooding from Hurricane Ian corroded batteries.

Gas vehicles often catch fire after a crash, overheated engines, or poor maintenance.
 
Some homes with attached garages have burned with gasoline-powered vehicles parked in them and with EV's parked inside.
 
In parking structures, there are also significant additional challenges to fighting an EV fire.
 
In some situations there is little that can be done to put out the fire and fire departments can only work to try and contain the damage while the vehicle burns.