Wong and Correo discuss lithium-ion battery fire prevention

My final question is on lithium ion battery fires.

I've never seen so many homes, five alarm fires in homes involving lithium batteries.

How much funding is dedicated specifically to lithium battery enforcement, inspections, public education, and specialized firefighting equipment?

Can you please talk about it?

There isn't really a separate funding pot tied to lithium ion batteries.

It's just something that's incorporated into everything.

So when, say, our public safety or fire safety education teams go out and do public education, this is one of the topics they cover.

Similarly, on the fire prevention side, there are a number of staff that work on that.

Chief Correa may have more to add.

Good afternoon, everybody.

So as Commissioner Kristof had said, it's really a comprehensive approach.

It's fire safety.

It is tied to Local Law 40, working with other agencies to make sure that we don't have unregulated batteries that are being sold out there.

It is addressing it as part of a post-fire investigation.

We work very, very closely with the Bureau of Fire Investigation.

So it's a really comprehensive approach to be able to deal with that.

And, of course, the most important is education, right, and which has made a marked difference

in, I think, raising the level of awareness that folks understand that they have to–

it's really important to make sure that they have batteries that are UL rated, that it's a complete system, the battery, the battery charger, not, you know, basic safety things, not charging it unattended, not charging it by means of egress.

So it's really a holistic approach to get the...

to the best safety outcome.

Do you think these vehicles should be stored indoors or they're safer for them to be stored outside?

Are you talking about electric vehicles?

Yes, electric bikes or e-scooters, yes.

So what we do is we make sure, in terms of electric vehicles, like cars, we don't regulate that.

In terms of micro-mobility devices, what we do is make sure that the charging devices, the bike itself, the battery is up to the UL standards.

We find that's the safest way to approach to make sure that when

those are implemented, those are charged, whether they're outside or inside, or the battery charging cabinets, we make sure that they are at a very high level of safety standard.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Councilmember Palladino, followed by Ressler.