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What Should Every 3PL Know About Li-ion Battery Storage Safety

In this Smart Supply Chain podcast episode, fire safety expert Todd LaBerge shares detailed data on the fire risks of lithium-ion batteries and what questions to ask your 3PL to ensure inventory is protected. Find out what industry leading safety Li-ion fire safety measures ALOM is implementing in our new Sacramento, CA facility to protect customers and ensure workplace safety.

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Episode Transcript

Speakers

Hosts: Sarah Garrison & Shireen Garrison
Guest: Todd LaBerge


Shireen Garrison00:06
Hey everyone, welcome to Smart Supply Chain, a podcast for supply chain professionals who think smarter. I’m your host. Shireen Garrison, along with my sister in supply chain, Sarah Garrison. Today, we’re asking the question, what should every 3PL provider know about lithium ion battery storage and safety? To help us understand this hot topic, we’re talking to fire protection engineer and fire marshal, Todd LaBerge. Hi, Todd.

Sarah Garrison00:17
Hello.

Todd LaBerge00:24
Hello. Happy Thursday.

Shireen Garrison00:35
Happy Thursday. Can you start by sharing a little bit about your background and your experience as a fire marshal?

Todd LaBerge00:41
Yeah, so I started in the insurance regulation industry, an insurance company that’s now known as FM, or FM Global, and then I worked in industry a lot for Intel Corporation. So I ran their global fire protection for nine years. And then I worked for the Department of Defense for a little while with hazardous materials warehouses, nuclear missile silos, weapons depots, things like that. And then I went over to this jurisdictional side, where I was the fire marshal and the managing fire protection engineer for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And then, most recently, I was one of the designated campus Fire Marshals at the University of California at San Francisco, and then for the last 20 years, like all of us code geeks, we all do consulting on the side to help with code regulation and jurisdictional compliance and things like that. And so now that’s what I’ve been doing solely since just recently.

Sarah Garrison01:36
Todd, you’re partnering with us for our build out of our storage location in our new Sacramento location. But how did you get started partnering with ALOM?

Todd LaBerge01:46
So gosh, several years ago, I was contacted by ALOM to help some high piled storage. You know, when you had some new products coming in to make sure that you were up to fire code compliance with this new storage we wanted to bring in. And so over the years, with all the facilities you know that ALOM was now in, I’ve helped make sure all the storage was complying with the fire code requirements for high powered storage. And I was having a conversation with some ALOM personnel about some battery facilities that were having some challenges. And we started to have a conversation about battery storage. And ALOM was really looking to pursue this market segment, and was, hey, how can we make sure we are the most safe and the most protected? And I’ve been playing in the battery field now for two and a half years or so said, Hey, let’s partner. Here’s where the codes are, here’s where they’re going. ALOM said, Hey, this is a great idea. Let’s lean forward. Let’s be best in class, and let’s go build a state of the art battery storage facility so we can protect everything, right? And that’s in my experience, ALOM’s always been that way in the probably seven or eight years we’ve worked together.

Shireen Garrison02:55
Thanks Todd, and I think we’re in good hands for this particular episode of the podcast. Welcome to it, and I’m going to hand it over to Sarah for a couple of questions.

Sarah Garrison03:04
Hi, Todd. So obviously the warehouses where we’re storing these are going to need to understand these requirements and all the regulations. But just in plain English, what are some best best practices that people who are managing these areas should be thinking about.

Todd LaBerge03:21
So there are a couple things. It’s a great question, the best thing you can do. So I have some, excuse me, I have some higher risk battery clients, and they have thermal imaging cameras. They’re called a TIC, right? T, I, C, and they walk around a regular intervals with the camera. Then you do regular inspections of the warehouse to see if any of the pallet loads or boxes are getting a little warm, right? And then, from a 3PL standpoint, everyone has lithium batteries in their warehouses. You may just not know it. And so better inventory control to understand what products are coming in and understanding what the code regular probe requirements are and interacting with your local fire code official and your local fire department to develop a response plan. Hey, if something happens, what would you like us to do? And then ultimately, any 3PL provider who is aware of the hazards of lithium ion batteries should start to evaluate putting infrastructure in place to not only detect the fire, but to also help control it, right? And then finally, you work with your staff on site to have an emergency response plan. What do we do if or when we have a problem? And then you prepare for that so it’s not people running around. Oh, it’s in the binder in the front office on page 27 of 412, right? And that way everyone’s aware of the hazard, you’ve taken steps to protect your warehouse from it, and you’ve engaged with your local fire department so they know what to do to help.

Sarah Garrison04:53
That’s really great advice. I don’t know if our employees want to be called the title tic, though.

Todd LaBerge04:59
The camera person, hey, camera person, go to your rounds, right? And go, Yeah, but you can do that just for a suspect. I have a suspect load that showed up, right? Hey, let’s flag that load. Leave it over here for maybe 24 hours. Have a sequestration or a segregation area, and then you can keep an eye on that one pallet and have a plan. Hey, If this pallet gets a little exciting, here’s, here’s what we’re going to do.

Sarah Garrison05:29
So if I have a product and I am want to wanting to ensure that there’s proper storage for my product, which contains lithium ion batteries, when I’m looking for a warehouse partner or a place to store my products, what are the questions I should be asking for? What are red flags I should be looking out for as I look for that partner?

Todd LaBerge05:52
So gosh, I hope every 3PL out there, every client, take it moves in this direction, right? So first you want it. You want to ask your your broker or the building owner, or wherever you’re going, or your partners. What have you done to protect your warehouse my products? Right? That I may have some bad battery challenges, or how are you going to protect my products from someone else’s product? Right? What the exposure runs both ways. So what have you done to identify lithium ion battery hazards? What is your strategy for addressing those hazards with storage, you know? And what are you doing about inventory control to make sure one of your clients isn’t just bringing in 150 pallet positions of stuff? I need to know what that stuff is, and so that way I can segregate or maybe I’m going to build a special room for it, or I have rack storage, or areas of the building specifically dedicated to the storage. What have you done to help protect my inventory, both from my own issues or from an exposure from someone else’s storage that might have a problem, especially in a multi client 3PL, right?

Sarah Garrison07:04
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you it is so important that you understand what the other products are that aren’t yours as well. And it’s not only a question of the concern for your products, but it’s about your your brand reputation. It’s about the people who work in that facility, and how they could could potentially be injured or hurt in that scenario. So that’s really important. We at ALOM we’re start standing up a new facility within Sacramento, California, and we partnered with you, because we are building a state of the art battery storage location within that facility. Can you describe a little bit about what are the things that you recommended that we do to make us best in class, in battery storage?

Todd LaBerge07:50
Yeah, so it was really fun and exciting partnering with ALOM in this design, right? This is the leading most cutting edge of storage, leaning forward with code requirements that aren’t even written yet. Well, they’re not officially published. How’s that? So we thought about we use the existing language in the fire code and the International Fire Code adopted here in California as the California Fire Code, and also NFPA 55 language. So we separated the battery storage for everything else, right? So we put a two hour fire resistive construction rated wall and openings and fire doors and things to keep the battery storage in one specific area, so we know if and we lean forward planning on when something might happen. Everything else in the building as a whole is protected and I can contain my issues go in space. Then I mentioned before, right the thermal imaging cameras, there are, you know, stationary fire detection devices, both thermal imaging and then smoke detection, right that we employed to say, hey, you know, when that battery first starts to get excited and those flammable gasses get vented, standard and traditional smoke detectors can actually pick them up right air sampling, we call that. So now I have an ability to detect it and roll our heroes in the fire trucks to get out and respond.

We can also let our employees know, hey, for your safety, you need to evacuate this area, enact your response plan. And then lastly, we provided within the racks. We followed the guidance in FM Global Data Sheets for specifically rack storage of lithium ion batteries, and they have requirements or recommendations that they develop based on actual fire test data. They put batteries in a rack and lit them on fire. And okay, here’s what you need to do to protect the rest of the storage. So sort of an all encompassing separation with fire assisted construction, we have an ability to now detect something going on in one of the pallets, and then we have an ability to put water directly on the pallet. It that is having an issue, and so that way we can work on controlling it from going any further. And then the fire department will interact and do training with them so they understand the response protocol as to how to deal with a specific pallet that’s having an issue.

Sarah Garrison10:15
So we’re here today to talk about lithium ion battery storage. And so many of the products that we buy today contain lithium ion batteries. What makes these batteries so prone to fire danger?

Todd LaBerge10:27
Ultimately, I have stored energy, right? That energy really wants to go somewhere, right? I want to go from the anode to the cathode, right? Those are the two big pieces. And specifically with lithium ion batteries, they have this thing in the middle called the separator, and then there’s electrolyte and other things. So lithium ion batteries are specifically subject to this thing we call thermal runaway. Right whenever you’ve seen the fires on the videos and the news, that is almost always thermal runaway. Somehow something happens to the separator, and somehow you have a free flow of electrons that heats up. It heats up the electrolyte. And electrolyte typically has flammable proprietary components, and they off gas, something that becomes a very flammable set of vapors and also toxic. And so I have heat. I have flammable vapors, and all they need is one little ignition source, and boom, now I have a very, very energetic fire, even the smallest amount, the smallest battery out there, and it happens really quickly, and it’s all over in an instant. Unfortunately, these batteries tend to be packaged with other things that also like to burn once they’ve had a rather energetic fire on them. \

Sarah Garrison11:38
Then is there something about storing these things in a warehouse in bulk that make it more dangerous?

Todd LaBerge11:45
Oh, absolutely right. So if you think about it, yes, I just mentioned they always have something else. These lithium ion batteries always have something else around them that likes to burn, typically, multiple other batteries. So the first problem I have is, let’s say I take your standard E bike, right? That your kids, my kids got for Christmas or whatever, I might have eight or 10 or 12 or 14 little batteries that are about the size of a, say, a half eaten rule, a lifesaver, right? Your Tesla has hundreds of them in so my little e bike, or my Makita power drill, has 10 batteries in it, right? So when one gets excited into thermal runaway, it sets its friends into thermal runaway, and then its friends into thermal runaway. So imagine a bunch of these batteries in a case, several cases on a pallet, and multiple pallets stacked vertically in a warehouse. So I have lots of friends to bring into the party when one of these batteries goes into thermal runaway, and it can get, you know, very interesting, very quickly.

Shireen Garrison12:45
Does the size of the battery make any difference there? If it’s a bigger battery, it’s a bigger fire, faster burning to other batteries, or how does that play into it?

Todd LaBerge12:56
Sort of as ambiguous as that answer is, I don’t really need a very big cell to have a very energetic fire. All I need is a little bit of flammable electrolyte, and I need a free flow of electrons to then release those flammable gasses in a small, a small, little half lifesaver, size of battery might put out 30 or 40 liters of gas, which is, you know, if you imagine, if you spread your arms wide, as big as you can make them, that’s about how much gas one of these things can put out. And imagine you light that on fire, a very quick flash fire, everything around it now wants to come along and play along with the party. And so now I have opportunities to get other batteries into this thermal runaway, or even the box, the cardboard, I start lighting the cardboard on fire, that cardboard now provides a lot of heat to the battery, or even the plastic case that they’re usually in that will start to burn, that will send more batteries in the thermal runaway, and it’s just off to the races.

Sarah Garrison13:55
So the fact that we have so many more of these products, and we’re storing more of them together, really is increasing the risk.

Shireen Garrison14:03
Todd. We’re going to take a quick break here. We’ll be back in a few minutes.

Sarah Garrison14:10
Shireen, this week’s topic really got me thinking about risk and how changes in the market or the world can create risks in supply chain, and it reminded me of the anthrax scare after 911 at that time, I was working at a big corporation, and they wouldn’t let any of the employees receive mail or get packages, because that all had to be centralized, and they were wearing hazmat suits and gloves. Do you remember that?

Shireen Garrison14:34
I do remember that it was like you were in some sort of weird sci fi movie or something, because there’s people walking around like in full gear. Yeah, that was really scary. But I think anytime that you have anything that’s coming into your warehouse or to your office, there’s always risk associated with that, because you don’t know what people are going to send.

Sarah Garrison14:53
Yeah, I guess that’s why managing returns within 3PLs is always so challenging, because who knows what people are sending back.

Shireen Garrison15:01
Do you remember, actually, a few weeks ago, somebody sent in a full size mannequin in the actual return box of the real products that we were doing, but they put a mannequin in there instead. It’s like, what was going on there?

Sarah Garrison15:12
The team loved that.

Shireen Garrison15:20
Welcome back to Smart Supply Chain. We’re here with Todd LaBarge. Had is a top Fire Safety Engineer and fire marshal, sharing his experience and expertise in fire safety with us today.

Sarah Garrison15:31
So what are what are the regulations and fire codes that start to address these increasing risks?

Todd LaBerge15:38
So depending on the state you’re in there. There are two fire codes throughout the US that are adopted. In some states, they adopt them both. You have the International Fire Code, the IFC, which 30 some odd states adopt. Then you have NFPA one, fire code which some number of other states adopt. And then NFPA one sends you into this standard known as NFPA 855, the standard for stationary energy storage systems, but there’s a bit for storage in there. So these two codes, the International Fire Code, and NFPA 855, they’re now working. Literally, we’re voting on all the code changes, literally, in the next month for both codes, about changes in the regulations. Because literally, every week we learn something new. There’s a new incident with lithium ion batteries and to store it. And so as the codes struggle to keep up, right now, we’re looking at, okay, I need to have some rapid detection, I have to have some sprinkler protection. I have to have an emergency response plan. What are you going to do when you have your fire? It’s not really an if in a lot of cases. And so as we struggle to keep up, right, we’re putting larger, sort of umbrella protection measures in place based upon loss history.

Shireen Garrison16:57
Hey, Todd, you mentioned with regulations and stuff, they’re different all across the country. How does that work? I mean, lithium ion batteries are everywhere. They’re stored in a lot so lots of warehouses across the country. As you mentioned, they’re probably in every warehouse in some way, shape or form. How does that work? If all the regulations are different, how do people keep up?

Todd LaBerge17:16
So let’s make it even more complicated. I have two different codes, right, that regulate you have the International Fire Code and NFPA one that sends you to NFPA 855, right? Not only do I have two different codes, I have different editions of every code that are adopted locally in the state, in the city or the county. So we’re currently in the 2024 edition of the fire code, International Fire Code, and NFP one we’re working on the 2027 edition. Some states are in the 2012 so battery regulations weren’t even in the codes until 2021 so many states are still in the 2018 fairly recent. So battery problems don’t even exist in those codes yet. So they don’t even have any language to guide them of how to protect the story they don’t even know. They have no regulations. There’s nothing legally adopted. So as we try and struggle with do you even have the most up to date code or best practice advice? I, as a local fire code official, I’m not even going to know the warehouse staff and personnel aren’t really even going to know where to go, because, hey, my fire code doesn’t even know that batteries exist, right? The first NFPA, 855, the standard for energy storage came out in 2020, right? So I might not even have regulations to follow if I wanted.

Shireen Garrison18:44
It’s crazy. It sounds like the wild west out there.

Todd LaBerge18:47
Absolutely.

Shireen Garrison18:48
I do have to say that battery fires are a really scary experience. I lived near Moss Landing in California, and I remember a couple years ago there was a battery complex fire there that shut down Highway One, and I was driving from the Bay Area to the Monterey area, and then I was stuck. I couldn’t get through and there was putting shelter in place, orders in place. It was really scary. How do firefighters approach these kinds of fires? What are, what are those challenges that they’re running into with battery fires?

Todd LaBerge19:18
So that Moss Landing fire was interesting. They’ve actually had two, but they had the one, the big one you’re talking about. What we’ve learned is, and we just had this also happen last Friday, by the way, they shut down Interstate 15 from Los Angeles to Vegas. So all the people trying to drive to Vegas got stuck at 115 degree heat. Battery, recycling container lit on fire. They pulled over the side of the road and they let it burn for three days, right? I know, right. So that’s one of your problems, and we they burn a long time. O time. Mesa, San Diego, just a month ago, had a fire. It burned for two weeks. So think about from a fire fighting standpoint. What do I do? Typically, our heroes who run around on the red trucks and save our lives, they’re taught, hey, put water on it, put the fire out. The problem with lithium ion batteries in specific is the they have an oxide component to them, which means they bring their own oxygen to the party. So I have flammable gas and oxygen, right? These things burn underwater to an extent. So how do you extinguish a fire that can burn underwater? Well, you don’t. So what we’ve learned now, and what the primary response is, is you just let it burn out, right? You are not going to extinguish a lithium ion battery fire. There’s just the amount of water is insane. So rather than waste all the water and you have to worry about environmental runoff, they just stand back and they do what we call exposure protection. I make sure it doesn’t spread to something else. And that’s what we did in the Moss Landing fire is the response protocol was standoff, provide exposure protection so it doesn’t spread to the other containers, right? And we separate them by certain amount of distances based on fire testing, and you just let it burn that way. I don’t waste any water, I haven’t put any water into the effluent stream. I don’t have to worry about environmental damage, and it just burns itself out eventually, right? Even the biggest fire will self extinguish when it runs out of fuel, and that’s the latest and most current strategy is to just let it burn, and it drives firefighters crazy, because you want to be the hero with the hose and put it out, right?

Sarah Garrison21:31
Yeah, that’s terrifying. If the best response is to just let them burn, it’s really important that we all figure out how to get in front of this and avoid this more frequently. Can you share what might be a likely scenario if those sensors did measure something? What might happen?

Todd LaBerge21:48
Yeah, so let’s say we’ve detected a fire one way or another, be it a personnel saw it by on a round, or my sensors got it, or it lit on fire and the fire sprinklers went off. Somehow, I know something has happened. So the first thing is, obviously, everyone’s going to be notified to evacuate, so they’re safe, and we have this two hour resistive construction, right? This, this room that ALOM was built. So what happens is, the fire department will arrive, and it gives them time to do what they call the size up. They determine what the incident is and how they’re going to approach, attacking and suppressing the fire. So depending on any number of circumstances, is the pallet on the ground? Is it right next to the door? Is it on 30 feet in the air? That way they have plenty of time to figure out their response, how to safely attack the fire and, most importantly, how to contain the spread and then eventually pursue extinguishment, and it might again, just be letting it burn out. Maybe they’ve been taught now how to drive forklifts. Some fire departments are learning that to bring it outside and get it out of the building. Ultimately, you want to get it out of the building and let it do its thing in the parking lot.

Sarah Garrison22:57
That is really cool. Is there tech in the future that’s going to help us with this? Is A.I. to have a role to play here?

Todd LaBerge23:05
Outside of detection and response, not really. As the battery technologies continue, eventually, we will start to move away from lithium ion batteries, the breadth of them, right? There are numerous other technologies out there, but lithium ion batteries are here to stay, and some of even the other ones. Oh, like the sodium ion batteries, there’s new ones coming out. Oh, they’re less hazardous. We don’t have the stomach runaway problem. That’s actually not true. Testing is proven. They just need to get a little bit hotter before they have problems, right? So this thermal runaway issue at least for the foreseeable future, is not going to go away, and A.I. will be able to help detect fires, perhaps a little bit better, also, perhaps through inventory control right and inventory identification of batteries coming into storage and might not be in the right place. And as even as A.I. develops and evolves that might have a new place we haven’t even considered yet.

Sarah Garrison24:07
Yeah, that makes sense. And what can happen in inventory control technology could help us improve in that area, because it’s key that that’s an important part of it.

Todd LaBerge24:17
Absolutely.

Sarah Garrison24:18
Any final advice that we haven’t covered?

Todd LaBerge24:21
For any 3PL provider, both I want to have my stuff stored somewhere, or I am a 3PL and I have things coming into my warehouse. It is truly a partnership. It’s not a blind storage capacity, right? It’s what are you bringing in? How do I either protect my storage as as as the vendor or as the logistics company. How am I going to protect all of it together as a partnership and we partner with our fire department? Hey, I really want you to understand my warehouse, especially if I know I have battery storage right so everybody can work together and respond quickly. And ultimately look at upgrading some infrastructure, or selecting facilities that have already implemented these fire and life safety infrastructure they’ve leaned forward with that. We get it. We want to make sure everything and everyone is safe.

Shireen Garrison25:18
And that will have to be the last word, at least on battery storage for now, because we’re almost out of time, we do have one final question for you though Todd. Our question that we ask all of our guests is, what is your all time favorite vacation destination or a dream vacation you’ve always wanted to take? Tell us.

Todd LaBerge25:38
So I just had the good fortune to take our youngest son just graduated high school, and we took the whole family. We went to Europe for a grand tour of the mountains. I would love to we I would love to do it again. We did the French Alps, we did the Swiss Alps, and then we finished our time on the beach in Spain. And it was unbelievable. And if I get to go by myself, I’m going to go surfing.

Shireen Garrison26:04
I was going to say that surfboards coming with you, right?

Todd LaBerge26:08
Absolutely. So you don’t have parallel Todd only, or Todd and his friends. We’re going surfing. And if it’s for the family, I want to go hiking and enjoy Europe.

Sarah Garrison26:17
Sounds amazing either way.

Shireen Garrison26:20
It does sound amazing. Thank you so much for all of your advice and your information. We really appreciate your time. Thank you, Todd LaBerge, our expert fire safety engineer and fire marshal, for being our guest today on Smart Supply Chain. Thanks, Todd.

Todd LaBerge26:35
Thanks for having me.