Lithium-ion battery fires upend California communities, raising alarms about storage, safety

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Set us as preferred 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 onto 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 around 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 local 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 online in June, stores energy captured at the water treatment plant’s on-site 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...