INTERVIEW
Steven LaPenta 
Battalion Fire Chief
Newark Department of Public Safety, Fire Division

Before a responder can open the correct rescue sheet, the vehicle itself must be identified. Battalion Fire Chief Steven LaPenta traces an unfinished federal record dating back to 2007 and examines what the latest UL FSRI research means for distinguishing a passenger-compartment fire from battery thermal runaway.

By Sang Min Han _ han@autoelectronics.co.kr
한글로보기

Steven LaPenta          is a Battalion Fire Chief with the Newark Department of Public Safety, Fire Division, providing command-level leadership on the fireground while also serving in the hazardous materials, training, and special-operations divisions. He holds leadership roles with the New Jersey UASI Fire CBRNE program and the New Jersey Fire Threat Task Force, and is a New Jersey State Certified Level 2 Fire Instructor. Over more than 37 years in the fire service, he has served as a police/fire dispatcher, firefighter, fire captain, battalion chief, hazardous-materials responder, and instructor, building hands-on expertise in fireground operations, hazardous materials response, technical rescue, vehicle extrication, and command supervision. He also maintains practical familiarity with how electric, hybrid, fuel-cell, and lithium-ion battery systems affect size-up, suppression tactics, extrication, and towing and storage considerations. His leadership rests on three principles: safety first, continuous development, and accountable presence. He believes a leader's first duty is bringing every member of the crew home safely, with technical skill coming second. He treats training as an ongoing obligation rather than a periodic requirement, emphasizing scenario-based learning. And he holds that leadership earns trust when it is visible on the fireground and accountable for both successes and shortcomings.




PART 1
The Record NHTSA Already Wrote
Battalion Fire Chief Steven LaPenta on the unfinished federal chronology of exterior vehicle identification and the responder petitions submitted in July 2026



When we exchanged messages a few weeks ago, you mentioned you'd been putting together something on this going back to 2007. Now that I'm looking at the whole thing — why go back that far?
LaPenta    Because the training materials most of us grew up on treat exterior propulsion identification like a new operational idea. It isn't. Congress required a permanent, prominent exterior display identifying alternative-fuel capability back in 2007, and gave DOT 42 months to write a final rule. NHTSA proposed one in 2014. It was never finalized. That's still sitting there in the Unified Agenda today. Separately, the FSRI report lists propulsion type and battery involvement as the next priority after life safety in size-up, and notes that fire can burn away the badges, charge doors, and tailpipes crews are trained to look for. Two different documents, one federal and one operational, arriving at the same problem independently.

What did Congress actually require, exactly?
LaPenta    The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Section 105, amended 49 U.S.C. § 32908. It falls under “Consumer Information.” Manufacturers had to permanently and visibly mark that a vehicle could run on alternative fuel, plus owner's-manual language and a fuel-compartment label. A final rule was due in 42 months. Congress wasn't writing this for firefighters — that distinction matters, because everything NHTSA did afterward is what now intersects with emergency response.

The statutory deadline was June 19, 2011. Where does that stand now?
LaPenta    Still open. NHTSA's Unified Agenda entry for RIN 2127-AK75 still lists that 2011 deadline, still describes the rulemaking as implementing the 2007 requirement, and is still classified “Long-Term Action” with next action “undetermined.” That's the status as of August 2026.

Then the 2014 proposal came out. What should a first-arriving responder take from that document?
LaPenta    Two separate ideas got bundled into one NPRM. To satisfy Congress, NHTSA proposed a plain-language badge, usually near the model name on the rear of the vehicle. In the same document, it also discussed the blue-diamond marking used on some CNG vehicles, and floated the idea that standardizing a symbol like that could have independent safety value — separate from the 2007 consumer-disclosure purpose. It went further and asked whether extra labels or locations were needed “for the use and safety of first responders,” specifically because a rear badge could be destroyed in a rear-impact crash. Comments closed April 21, 2014. No final rule ever followed.

NTSB got involved in 2020. How does that connect?
LaPenta    Safety Study SR-20/01 documented the risks lithium-ion battery fires pose to responders — shock, thermal runaway, reignition, stranded energy — and asked whether manufacturer guidance adequately protects first and second responders. It didn't create an identification requirement. It did put on the federal record that energy configuration changes what responders are dealing with, and that they need vehicle-specific information to do the job.

You jump from 2020 to a final rule in December 2024. What happened in between, in April 2024?
LaPenta    NHTSA proposed FMVSS No. 305a — standardized rescue sheets and emergency response guides in ISO 17840 format, so crews could find fire, submersion, towing, storage, and component-hazard information in a fixed, predictable order. That proposal became the December 2024 final rule. But exterior markings were never in that April NPRM. NHTSA later pointed to that fact to say markings were outside the scope of the docket. If you didn't propose it, you can't finalize it there. That's a procedural wall, not a verdict on the idea.

So FMVSS No. 305a — doesn't that settle it?
LaPenta    It answers an adjacent question, not this one. The rule mandates standardized emergency response guides and rescue sheets, ISO 17840-formatted, with a central federal repository. Compliance started December 22, 2025. Useful documents — but they assume you already know which vehicle and which configuration you're standing in front of. Commenters, including the Center for Auto Safety and Consumer Reports, asked for standardized, permanently affixed exterior markings. NHTSA said that wasn't proposed, so it was out of scope, and said it would keep evaluating the type, location, and effectiveness of exterior markings for responders. Deferred, not closed.

So your timeline really has two separate threads running through it.
LaPenta    Right. Thread one: the 2007 consumer-information mandate — permanent exterior display, owner's manual, fuel-compartment label, final rule due in 42 months. Thread two: NHTSA's 2014 recognition that a standardized symbol might serve an independent first-responder safety function, including whether a second badge location is needed when the rear one gets destroyed. Neither thread has been closed out in one rule. FMVSS No. 305a improved responder documentation, but it did not resolve either the exterior-display mandate or the visibility question. The July 2026 petitions live on that unresolved thread.

Which means the rescue sheet still has a first-step problem.
LaPenta    Yes. You need to identify the propulsion system before you can pull the right sheet. That's harder when the same model is sold as gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or full electric, and harder still once fire has already taken the badge and the charge port with it. NIST Technical Note 2365, from this past March, also flagged that national incident data isn't structured to isolate lithium-ion events cleanly. So raw incident counts may not capture the actual scope accurately.

You and others filed petitions in July 2026. What are they actually asking for?
LaPenta    A narrower thing than people might assume: how can a responder immediately identify the vehicle's propulsion or energy system during initial approach and size-up — not five minutes in. VIN lookups, badges, apps, rescue sheets, the ERG — all useful later, none of them guaranteed in the first few seconds. This is an emergency-response identification question. It's not an attempt to turn a 2007 consumer-disclosure statute into a firefighter-safety law.
“Rescueability starts with identification.” That's the premise behind VISTA — Vehicle Identification, Safety, Training & Awareness — a free resource William S. Lerner, Joseph Bercovic, Gilberto Gonzalez, Daniel Iberer and I are building at vistasafety.org. The goal is simple: give responders better situational awareness, easier access to safety-critical information, and a real voice in the policy and standards conversations that shape how incidents actually get handled. It's not a tactics manual. It exists to help responders do the job they already know how to do, safely.

A petition with no public docket number — what does that actually mean, procedurally? And is “Long-Term Action” NHTSA-speak for “still alive,” or is it code for “shelved”?
LaPenta    I don't treat a missing public docket number as proof a petition vanished — I treat it as proof NHTSA hasn't taken the public step that creates a searchable file. Under 49 CFR Part 552, a petition goes to the Administrator for review, with a grant or denial supposed to follow within 120 days; a public docket only appears once the agency publishes something — a notice of receipt, a grant, a denial. Until then, “no public docket” can mean internal review, a filing never accepted as a formal petition, or an incomplete filing, which is why NHTSA's pending-petition table sometimes shows a blank field.
I treat “Long-Term Action” as Unified Agenda language, not NHTSA code. Active means something's expected within 12 months; Long-Term Action means the item still has a RIN but no public action is expected in the next year; Completed means finished or withdrawn. I call it “still alive” — but only on paper. In practice it's the parking lot: not a grant, not a denial, not a promise that work is happening. More like a TBD.

If this piece can only leave NHTSA with six questions, what are they?
LaPenta    1. Why was a final rule never issued under RIN 2127-AK75, given Congress's 42-month deadline?
2. Does NHTSA consider the exterior identification requirement in 49 U.S.C. § 32908(g) satisfied today — and if so, by what?
3. Why does AK75 remain “Long-Term Action / Next Action Undetermined” this long after the deadline?
4. What evaluation, if any, has NHTSA done since December 2024 on exterior markings for responders?
5. Does NHTSA treat the responder-identification issue as separate from the AK75 consumer-information issue?
6. What action does NHTSA anticipate on the pending petitions?


 

PART 2
Two Fires, One Report
Battalion Fire Chief Steven LaPenta on the August 4, 2026 UL FSRI EV fire report



FSRI ran eighteen full-scale burns for this. That's a lot of work. What made you want to write about it instead of just saying "good report, go read it"?
LaPenta    Because the operational chapter is actually doing two jobs at once, and if you don't separate them, it reads like one instruction. There's a passenger-compartment fire in there, and there's a battery thermal-runaway fire in there. They behave completely differently. A crew pulling up on scene is going to act on whatever language the report hands them — not on a footnote three pages later explaining the nuance.

Okay, headline first. Is it true that an EV fire basically burns like a gas car fire?
LaPenta    Mostly — with a big asterisk. When the battery isn't involved, growth rate, peak heat, duration, all of it can look similar to a conventional fire, because it's driven by the same interior materials burning. The asterisk is "when the battery isn't involved" — that part is FSRI's finding, not mine. Once fire gets into the traction pack, the numbers change — more metals, more fluoride. One thing I want to correct before it spreads: people keep conflating that fluoride finding with a hydrogen spike, and that's not actually what the report says. Hydrogen shows up elsewhere, in the blanket-gas discussion. The free-burn comparison FSRI ran is fluoride and battery metals, not hydrogen.

Then it says water is the answer, but also that spraying the battery is basically pointless. Isn't that a contradiction?
LaPenta    No — it's two different fires, and both numbers are straight from FSRI's tests. Water put the cabin fire out in under a minute using less than 200 gallons. Continuous water application did not stop propagating thermal runaway in the tested packs. Their instruction is: protect exposures, keep the cabin from re-igniting, and let the battery burn itself out — which took them under 30 minutes and about 760 gallons that way. Water works great on the car. It's just not something that stops the cells once thermal runaway is propagating — that's the distinction I'd want every crew to walk away with.

What about fire blankets — are those a real tool or not?
LaPenta    Both, depending on what you're using them for — this is straight from the report. They can knock down cabin flames fast, and they help when you don't have water or can't let runoff go somewhere it shouldn't. What they can't do is stop a battery fire — they just trap the gas instead. In testing, that trapped gas caused backdrafts. There's at least one real-world vapor cloud explosion documented in a similar scenario. And afterward, FSRI's own instruction is basically "this thing is now hazardous waste" — dispose of it properly. What the report doesn't get into, and what I'd flag, is that nobody tells you how to actually decontaminate one — which is a real problem for the reusable blankets being sold.

"Let it burn" is described as the tactically simple option. Simple as in — you'd actually recommend it?
LaPenta    Simple on paper, and that's the report's own framing. No exposures, no water available, that's your baseline option — 40 to 80 minutes to burn out, call it 90 minutes to fully resolved. FSRI is upfront that it also produces the most airborne contamination of any option, may not match what your department or the public expects to see, and that "resolved" doesn't mean zero risk unless you can see every cell is spent. Here's what I'd add from the field: a battery pack isn't one sealed object. It's thousands of cells, and some of them can eject and land well outside a tight perimeter. Simple is not the same as safe or complete.

The report flags unique EV contaminants but says the health guidance doesn't change. That feels like it's talking out of both sides.
LaPenta    It's actually appropriate caution, not a dodge. They measured more particulate fluoride and more battery metals — nickel, manganese, cobalt, lithium — with battery involvement. Fluoride can become hydrofluoric acid on wet skin; metals can resettle and get kicked back into the air later. FSRI's own conclusion is that we don't yet know if that translates into a different long-term health risk, more research is needed, and until then, exposure control stays the same regardless of powertrain. That's honest, and it's not something I'd second-guess.

What did they actually find when they tested the gear?
LaPenta    Full structural PPE and SCBA are non-negotiable near the vehicle — that part doesn't change. But the sampling data shows protection has limits. Most metal contamination stayed on the outer shell, which is good. Lighter compounds didn't — some PAHs made it into the moisture barrier, and VOCs like benzene showed up on wristbands under the gear at levels close to what was measured outside it. The people on the hose line got the worst of it. NFPA 1850 cleaning is required, and FSRI doesn't claim it gets everything off. What I'd add, because the report doesn't spell it out: turnout gear is not a hazmat suit, and manufacturers don't give departments a real answer on how to decontaminate it beyond "launder it."

The report keeps saying "the battery" like it's one thing. Does that matter?
LaPenta    A lot, and this is where I'd push back on the report's own language. FSRI does talk about modules and cell types elsewhere, but the operational chapter still talks about "the battery" like it's one box. A sealed tray and an open-bottom floor pack don't fail the same way. Picture a rollover with an open-architecture pack — you could have a few thousand cells scattered across the cabin floor and over whoever's inside. What happens if one of those goes into runaway? A 12-volt battery can be sitting where a bumper structure used to be. A mild-hybrid module isn't remotely the same thing as an 800-volt traction pack. FSRI is right not to test cutting into the case — that's outside a lab's scope. But on scene, "the battery" is usually plural, and a visually identical previous model year might not even have the same setup. If you're only looking for one box, you can walk right past the part that's already venting.

What do you do with a car that's hissing and smoking but hasn't caught fire yet?
LaPenta    Treat it as a fire that just hasn't started. In a garage or anywhere enclosed, unburned vent gas can flash without warning. Full PPE, SCBA, a charged line ready, distance, and clear the vapor path — that's the baseline, and it's consistent with the report. FSRI does note gas meters can actually mislead you here, because hydrogen cross-reads on CO and LEL sensors. What the report is honest about — and what I want people to sit with — is that nobody has studied ventilation tactics for this scenario yet. Too few real incidents, no experiments. Until that changes, something that looks like steam is not a reason to pull your facepiece off.

You said early suppression cuts down the toxic runoff and smoke the most. But how do you suppress early if you can't tell what you're looking at yet?
LaPenta    That's the tension nobody's solved, and it's my tension to raise, not FSRI's — the report just gives us the number. The data is real: get water on it before the pack is involved, and both the airborne and runoff contamination drop the most. But that assumes you can tell "this is just a cabin fire" from "this is a cabin fire sitting on top of an open battery pack" fast enough to act on it. With a plug-in hybrid that shares sheet metal with its gas-only twin, good luck. A visible signal for BEV, hybrid, or PHEV isn't cosmetic — it's the thing that would actually let a crew capture that early-suppression benefit in real time, instead of finding out after they've already committed water.

Who's missing from all this "everyone wears full PPE" advice?
LaPenta    Everyone who isn't a firefighter — and this is me stepping outside what the report covers, because it's written to the firefighter, full stop. EMTs are treating patients in or right next to the vehicle. Cops are managing the scene. Tow operators are handling the thing hours or days later. None of them typically have proper PPE, and they're rarely part of the planning conversation. I've got kids in law enforcement and friends in EMS — this isn't abstract to me. Somebody has to evacuate bystanders too. Who is that, and what are they wearing while they do it?

Have you personally handled an incident that was initially assessed as a straightforward passenger-compartment fire, only to confirm later that the battery pack was involved?
LaPenta    Not personally with a passenger car — what I've had is commercial tractor-trailers that were already being fought before we confirmed, mid-suppression, that they were lithium-ion. No exterior indicators; we found out by accident. The published case is NTSB Highway Investigation Report HIR-23/02: crews knocked down most of a fire in 30 to 45 seconds, a pocket near the front kept burning, a dry-chemical extinguisher put it out and it reignited — only then did they identify the car as a Tesla from an emblem on a remaining wheel, pull the emergency response guide, and switch back to water. It reignited again 45 minutes later; they had to lift the car to get water underneath. The initial call was a vehicle fire, and battery involvement was confirmed only after crews were already committed. NFIRS, now NERIS, still has no field that forces propulsion type or pack involvement, so most of these fires never get flagged as EV at all.

In practice, how is the risk of reignition communicated to towing and storage operators, and who's responsible for passing that along?
LaPenta    On paper there's a handoff. On the street it's inconsistent or it never happens, which is a big part of why these cars keep reigniting on wreckers and in storage yards. What I expect of an incident commander: air-monitor through the whole event, keep apparatus on scene during recovery, don't release an unstable battery to the wrecker, and follow it to the yard to brief the operator directly — reignition, off-gassing, delayed thermal runaway that can surface days or months later, fifty feet of isolation. There's no required document that travels with the car and no federal chain of custody; NHTSA and SAE J2990 just say the information should move down the chain, with nothing forcing it to happen. NTSB looked at four battery fires — three reignited in towing or storage. New Jersey has no state-mandated EV certification for tow operators or storage facilities at all.

Have you encountered cases where EMS or law-enforcement personnel received even basic PPE or training related to EV battery fires?
LaPenta    I can speak to this first-hand — I've got family and friends in law enforcement and EMS, and none of them have had any EV-battery-fire training or PPE guidance. A national survey found police and EMS the least likely of any responder group to have EV training — over 40% had none, and the courses that exist aren't part of the national EMT exam or any required certification. New Jersey is typical: no OEMS mandate for EMTs, no Police Training Commission requirement for officers. A bill, A4005/S2530, would require both an EMT and a firefighter course on EV risks, but it's still proposed law, not current curriculum.

Give me the one thing a chief should walk away with if they only read this once.
LaPenta    This part is mine, not the report's: two different fires, not one. The cabin fire behaves like a normal car fire and water handles it. The battery fire mostly doesn't respond to suppression — manage exposures, don't assume the cells are out. Blankets and "let it burn" both come with real tradeoffs, not free wins. The contaminants are documented even if the health science is still catching up. PPE is required and it is not complete protection. And it all comes back to the same thing: knowing, on approach, what's actually in that vehicle or on fire. NHTSA raised the question in 2014, and the issue resurfaced in the 2024 rulemaking. A rescue sheet is useful. It's not a substitute for something you can see from thirty feet away.

Last thing — what should stay in the article about what this study didn't do?
LaPenta    A few things, and these are all straight from FSRI's own limitations section, not my editorializing. They didn't capture peak or time-resolved concentrations, only test averages. They didn't test water-injection tools into the pack — the report just says don't pierce it. Nobody's tested ventilation for a venting-but-not-burning vehicle. And runoff from blankets plus under-vehicle nozzles came back dirtier than plain hand-line runoff, with the fuller runoff study still in peer review. None of that erases the tension in the operational chapter. It explains why one card can't cover two different fires.

AEM(오토모티브일렉트로닉스매거진)