Fire broke out at one of the world’s largest lithium battery storage plants in Moss Landing, California, on Thursday.
The Vistra battery storage plant, the largest in the world, caught fire on Thursday afternoon forcing the entire plant to be evacuated, according to KSBW-TV.
So far, 40 percent of the plant has been destroyed by the fire. Officials evacuated 2,000 people in the surrounding community due to the fumes and smoke emitted by the fire.
The facility is an energy storage depot for California’s energy grid.
Officials said that the facility’s fire suppression system was completely inadequate to address the fire.
“Besides toxic gases, batteries also off-gas — or release — hydrogen, carbon monoxide, etc,” said Ali Rangwala, the director of the explosion protection engineering program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in an email to Business Insider. “These gases, if confined and ignited, can pose an explosion hazard. This could propel fragments over large distances, depending on fuel load.”
Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church added that this was “more than just a fire.”
“It’s really a wake-up call for this industry, and if we’re going to be moving ahead with sustainable energy, we need to have a safer battery system in place,” Church said.
This is not the first time the state-sponsored facility has gone up in flames. In fact, it is the fourth fire at the facility since 2019.
Investigators do not yet know how of why the fire started.
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