Lithium-ion battery fires upend California communities, raising alarms about storage, safety
For more than three days, fire crews have worked to address a lithium-ion battery fire in La Verne that has forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents and raised questions about the safety of California’s rapidly expanding energy storage systems.
The state has invested heavily in battery storage — which holds on to energy captured by solar panels during the day so it can be used when electricity demand peaks in the evening — as it pushes to meet its ambitious goal of 100% clean-energy usage by 2045.
But these sites also come with dangers, as demonstrated by the massive Moss Landing battery fire in January 2025, which prompted the evacuation of about 1,500 residents and deposited heavy metals in a nearby estuary.
The La Verne battery fire is much smaller in scale but nonetheless alarming for those who had to leave their homes or deal with the closure of schools due to the potential of hazardous fumes.
“It’s really disheartening that our schoolchildren continue to be put at risk like this over and over,” said Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay), who pushed for stricter safety regulations around battery storage in the aftermath of the Moss Landing fire.
The La Verne blaze began shortly before noon Tuesday inside one of four 250-kilowatt-battery containers at the Metropolitan Water District’s facility on Wheeler Avenue, according to the La Verne Fire Department. As crews successfully stabilized the initial container, an adjacent 250-kilowatt container then started to overheat.
The facility’s battery storage system, which was brought on line in June, stores energy captured at the water treatment plant’s solar farm.
Battery fires are challenging to combat because, when a battery is damaged, a self-sustaining chemical reaction called thermal runaway can occur and easily spread to adjacent batteries.
When thermal runaway starts, the process can continue for days, with the potential for batteries to release toxic gases such as hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride and carbon monoxide.
Thus far in La Verne, air quality monitoring has not detected any hazardous emissions, but the unstable nature of the batteries and potential risk of toxic fumes have led officials to keep evacuations in place in the immediate area around the site, Fire Department Battalion Chief Mark Savage said.
Crews were able to stabilize the temperature of the second storage box by Thursday afternoon, enabling first responders to begin the process of de-energizing the individual batteries, with the hope of resolving the incident soon and enabling investigators to begin probing the cause of the fire.
The La Verne fire comes just days after another battery fire erupted at Moss Landing, reigniting concerns at one of the state’s largest battery storage sites. About 55,000 batteries were damaged in the initial incident, the cause of which remains under investigation.
The initial Moss Landing fire sparked a flurry oflegislative proposals to bolster California’s energy storage safety.
State Senate Bill 283, authored by Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), was signed into law in October and requires battery storage developers to consult with local fire authorities and undergo fire inspection before going on line. It also requires that they adhere to safety standards established by the National Fire Protection Assn.
Other proposals that would have created stricter requirements around the approval process for new storage sites did not advance through the Legislature this session.
They include Assembly Bill 303, which would have required local authorities to be part of the permitting process for facilities and would have established a 3,200-foot setback requirement from sensitive areas such as schools, homes, hospitals and environmentally sensitive habitat.
Bill author Addis said she was disappointed the bill never received a committee hearing, and plans on reintroducing new safety legislation in the next legislative cycle.
“We do need to transition off of oil and gas,” she said. “And as we transition, we cannot keep making these mistakes and treating people really with the disrespect that dirty energy has treated our communities with.”
Independent of the Legislature, the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the California Energy Commission have made regulatory changes around battery energy storage sites in recent years.
Best practices around battery storage, and the technology of batteries themselves, have improved since the Moss Landing storage facility began construction in 2020.
New large-scale facilities typically use more stable lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that are stored in outdoor containers configured to limit the spread of a potential fire, according to the California Energy Commission. They are also subject to more robust testing and emergency response requirements.
Most of these improvements have focused on larger utility-scale storage sites such as Moss Landing.
The incident at La Verne took place at a smaller facility where solar energy is captured and stored for internal use as opposed to being sent into the broader electrical grid.
“The safety conversation has been focused on the utility-scale stuff,” said Dustin Mulvaney, professor of environmental studies at San Jose State. “The fact that there was an evacuation and need for an emergency response for this facility makes me wonder if there now needs to be some more attention on the small battery sites.”