REMINDER - request for information on electric and hibrid vehicles




Dear Firefighter Colleagues!

The National Inspectorate for Fire Services of the National Directorate General for Disaster Management is considering incidents involving electric and hybrid vehicles as a major challenge. They have a major impact on today's fire services, on the decisions of fire officers, on the training of firefighters and on the safety of the responders. We want to evaluate the international firefighting experience in order to integrate the relevant lessons learned into national regulations and operating procedures.

Questions to the CTIF Member States:

• Which special regulations are applicable to fires involving electric/hybrid vehicles?
(occupational safety, firefighting tactics, and choosing the right extinguishing method).
• In your country, how common is the technique of inserting the extinguishing agent into the battery pack of electric/hybrid vehicles (using an extinguisher lance)? Have there ever been incidents where the extinguisher lance was used during fires?
• What is the procedure for quarantining and submerging the vehicle into water (to prevent possible re-ignition) after the electric vehicles have been extinguished, and by which organisation, by what equipment and for how long?
• What is the practical procedure for where the burnt-out electric vehicle and the contaminated cooling water used for submersion are transported? And how is the extinguishing water decontaminated?
• Who covers the costs (insurance company, owner, municipality, etc.) for the actions after the vehicle has been extinguished (transport, submersion, and quarantine)?
• Electric/hybrid vehicle fires are a special operations and the number of incidents is still relatively low, what operations analysis techniques are used to integrate the experiences into firefighting tactics?

If it is possible, would you please so kind to send us your guidelines and operating manuals relating to the questions, which would be highly appreciated (in English or German).

Please send your answers to these questions to [email protected] and [email protected] by 15 February 2024.

I look forward to receiving your reply.

Budapest, 10th January 2024

Yours faithfully:



Brigade General Zoltán Fülep
national inspector for fire services