GREENFIELD — Fire service leaders from across the region viewed footage of battery storage facilities, electric scooters and electric vehicles combusting into flames on Tuesday, broadening their knowledge of the unique challenges associated with extinguishing battery fires.

The presentation by National Fire Protection Association Northeast Regional Director Robert Duval comes as municipalities across the region are gearing toward electrification, such as Greenfield’s efforts to electrify its vehicle fleet and a 9-acre battery storage facility being proposed in Erving.

“The community should partner with the utility company or the installer and say, ‘All right, you’re going to show us all of this stuff. How do we shut this down? Where do we shut this down?’’ Duval said to those gathered at the John W. Olver Transit Center. “Make sure there’s an access road that your apparatus can get to, and it’s maintained, either the town maintains it or the utility maintains it, so if we have one of those nice February snowstorms, you can still get your apparatus out there.”

In the roughly two-hour presentation, which was attended by firefighters and public safety officials from Wendell, Turners Falls, Leverett and Ashfield, Duval explained the phenomenon of “thermal runoff” in which a damaged or overheated battery cell prompts a rapid self-heating chain reaction, causing long-burning fires that are challenging to extinguish.

The possibility of a long-burning fire was among the concerns cited by residents who pushed back against a proposal to create a 105-megawatt battery storage facility in Wendell that was ultimately withdrawn by the company, New Leaf Energy.

Displaying a battery testing video for an electric scooter, attendees watched as a plume of black smoke poured from the scooter as it charged in a bedroom and combusted in a matter of seconds, filling the room with flames. Duval noted that fires from full-size electric vehicles, like cars and trucks, can be larger and even more challenging to put out, as they involve larger batteries, which, in some cases, are made up of thousands of individual cells. When a Tesla tractor trailer caught fire in August after veering off the highway, Duval said the fire resulted in a 15-hour highway closure and could be extinguished only with 50,000 gallons of water and an airdrop.

Duval also shared tips for extinguishing electric vehicle or electric vehicle charging station fires, explaining to first responders that electric vehicle “dumpsters,” or enclosed metal containers, can be flooded with water and store burnt cars to prevent reignition. He added that using fire blankets can help contain electric fires in enclosed spaces like parking garages.

“What you’re going to see is they’re going to use a water lance to open up the floorboards of that car to get water into the battery,” Duval said, explaining a video of Czech firefighters successfully extinguishing an electric car fire in a parking garage. “It’s water that’s penetrating the battery pack, not a metal object, like some of the gadgets they were selling early on to puncture the battery cell.”

Opening discussion on battery storage facilities, Duval presented examples of battery storage facility fires from around the world that took hours, and in some cases, days, to extinguish. In large facilities, he noted, thermal runaway can cause a fast chain reaction even if power is shut off, as the battery cells still contain energy. He suggested that public safety officials meet with utility companies prior to a facility’s construction to learn about the types of batteries being stored on site, the facility’s storage of batteries in relation to its entrances and exits, and the location of any shutoff switches.

As personal energy storage systems become more popular for households seeking alternatives to generators in the event of a power outage, Duval said fire safety experts suggest that the systems be installed outside or in areas that are detached from the primary structure, such as sheds or garages.

“The utility companies, if they’re the ones coming in to do the installation, you should just ask them up front, ‘I want you to train my people, including DPW, the fire department, police department, EMS,’ whoever you think is going to respond to one of these incidents,” he said. “If it’s an independent person that’s coming in to sell stuff to the utility, it’s the same thing.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.