Firefighters Share Top Concerns For This Fire Prevention Week

SANTA MARIA, Calif. (KEYT) - Amid National Fire Prevention Week, local fire authorities are sounding the alarm about lithium-ion batteries.

The National Fire Protection Association is helping the public “Charge Into Safety.”

Lithium-ion batteries are found in our laptops, smartphones, iPads, electric vehicles, and they store our solar and wind power.

But they come with risks.

“Fires rapidly expand with ion lithium batteries,” says Santa Barbara County Fire Department spokesman Scott Safechuck. “So if you're charging your, let's say, an e-bike and it's a cheap knockoff brand or you're not using the approved charger, it can cause a short in the electrical system there and cause almost like a rapid explosion of the fire.”

Lithium-ion batteries are a fire hazard, and an increasingly common question is how to properly dispose of them.

As long as the battery is not giving off heat, swollen, or what’s called 'off-gassing,' they can be brought to your city’s household hazardous waste facility.

“Any time we want to recycle those batteries, we want to take them to an approved recycling center,” says Safechuck.

For Santa Maria, that’s the landfill out here on East Main Street.

They accept hazardous household waste every Wednesday and Saturday.

“It's free to do that and you can get the hours on our website,” says Santa Maria’s City Manager Mark van de Kamp.

Until then, always keep them in a bucket, not in your trash.

“If you'd like to get a free bucket just for this purpose, you can come out on Saturday, to Cops and Cars, it’s a car show,” says Van de Kamp. “There will be a booth with the Utilities Department and they'll be giving away these free buckets.”

If the battery is giving off excess heat or off-gassing, do not dunk it in a bucket of water, but set it outdoors on flat open concrete, and call the fire department for removal.

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