Unfortunately, no such volume of water is available in the Back Country

Tesla fire in Stamford took 600 gallons of water per minute to extinguish, official says

STAMFORD —City fire officials say it took them more than 40 minutes Thursday to extinguish a burning Tesla.

Stamford Fire Capt. Phillip Hayes said crews responded to the burning car, located behind the Blue Ginger Restaurant on East Main Street, around 11:20 a.m. Thursday.

Firefighters found the Tesla "heavily involved in flames," Hayes said.

Firefighters stretched a hose and began "pouring 200 gallons of water per minute onto and into the vehicle," Hayes said.

More crews soon arrived and a total of 600 gallons of water per minute was needed to douse the flames, he said.

It took crews 42 minutes to extinguish the blaze, according to Hayes, who along with Deputy Chief Eric Lorenz noted the difficulty of fighting fires in electric vehicles.

“A normal car fire usually requires no more than a single hose line,” said Lorenz, who was the incident commander for the fire. “But we know from other fire departments’ experiences that large amounts of water are the only solution when compared to a traditional vehicle fire.”

Hayes said this fire may have been easier than other electric car blazes "because the entire bank of batteries dropped on the ground underneath the vehicle, where firefighters were focusing their fire attack."

“This is no routine car fire,” Lorenz said. “It requires special handling.”

“Unfortunately, the ponds the department relies on in the back country can’t supply anywhere close to that kind of volume: 6-12 gpm is the average,” Officer Joe Bolton told FWIW, when reached for comment. “So that’s why we encourage residents living north of the Merritt to park these cars overnight in the Whole Foods parking lot, or the municipal lot across from the fire house, and walk home. And as an added bonus, our out of town car thieves from the Bronx don’t have to travel way up there and endanger the neighborhoods; they can just do their shopping in the downtown area, and head back to the Bronx on I-95, where they become New York’s problem, not ours.”