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The Oklahoma City Fire Department responded to the incident on Northwest 137th Street Tuesday evening, where everyone left the house safely and no injuries were reported. "There were several of these lithium-ion batteries charging on a worktable on the garage … there was roughly 20 that was charging,” said Scott Douglas, with the Oklahoma City Fire Department. Douglas explained that these batteries were used to power remote control planes and racecars, but they can also be found throughout homes, powering everything from toys to cellphones to vacuum cleaners. He noted that fires caused by these batteries are becoming routine.

City health officials say nearby residents should stay indoors as much as possible, wear a mask outside, avoid strenuous physical activity and close windows and doors. Decommissioned buses were burned during a fire at the SEPTA Midvale Depot in North Philadelphia on June 5, 2025. (Emma Lee/WHYY) From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know! A fast-moving fire erupted early Thursday at a transit bus lot in Philadelphia filled with dozens of decommissioned vehicles, sending a thick plume of black smoke into the sky but causing...

A cargo ship carrying 3,000 cars, including 800 electric vehicles, caught fire off the coast of Alaska and continues to burn. The Coast Guard says that all 22 crew members escaped the ship and were picked up by two nearby freighters. The ship, a Liberian-registered car-carrier named "Morning Midas," was on its way to Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico, from Yantai, China.. ... the Coast Guard is going to let the ship burn, since trying to put out a lithium-ion fire is nearly futile. ... In 2022, the Felicity Ace, a car carrier slightly larger than Morning Midas, sank in the Atlantic...

If fire departments on land have problems unleashing the torrent of water needed to extinguish a single burning EV, the crew of a ship doesn't stand a chance against hundreds of flaming lithium-ion batteries. A cargo ship carrying around 3,000 vehicles across the Pacific Ocean caught fire on Tuesday. The Morning Midas, a 600-foot cargo ship, was in the middle of a voyage from Yantai, China to Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico when the fire broke out. Zodiac Maritime, the ship's London-based operator, noted that smoke was first spotted on a deck carrying 800 electric vehicles. Once the blaze got out of...

Flying soon? TSA just banned lithium batteries from checked bags. Here’s what’s allowed and how to pack your electronics the right way. If you’re like me and always pack a portable charger or spare battery for your devices, you’ll want to pay close attention to a new rule that could impact your next trip. The TSA has just banned lithium batteries—including those in power banks and charging cases—from checked luggage. Here’s what you need to know before you head to the airport. What You Need to Know Spare lithium batteries (including power banks and charging cases) are now banned from...

What if the breakthrough in battery recycling wasn’t high-tech—but prehistoric? The bacteria used by Cell Cycle thrive at body temperature. - Cell Cycle ================================================================== As the world braces for a flood of end-of-life lithium batteries from electric vehicles and electronics, recycling systems are struggling to keep pace. Current methods are often expensive, energy-intensive, and environmentally taxing. But a small UK startup believes the solution might lie in nature’s oldest engineers: bacteria that have been around for tens of millions of years. Cell Cycle, a startup under the SER Group, has developed a novel approach called LithiumCycle that uses engineered microbes...

Alberta’s Leduc geological formation contains an abundance of lithium, a critical and rare metal that is needed in batteries to power electric vehicles and cellphones. Lithium has traditionally been extracted from “hard rocks,” but in Alberta, it exists in the brine, or water, left behind in oilfields across the province. Geologist Chris Doornbos started E3 Lithium, a TSX-listed geo-tech company that entered into a strategic partnership with Imperial Oil last year. And last week, the company announced some impressive test results. “Our resource was upgraded (last week) to 16-million tonnes — 9.4 indicated and 6.6 measured resources of lithium carbonate...

Large-scale solar farms, wind turbines, and associated infrastructure are touted as solutions to the climate crisis, but their development comes at the cost of native forests and critical habitats.” “Until conservation charities disentangle themselves from government funding and corporate influence, they risk becoming complicit in the very destruction they were created to prevent.” ... One of the great ironies of our age is the double standard of Big Environmentalism toward wind and solar, which commit numerous eco-sins that would not be tolerated otherwise. Dilute, intermittent, and thus inefficient? Yes. Energy sprawl requiring service roads and transmission lines in the wild?...

A major lithium deposit discovered near the Portuguese border in Castilla Leon could power Spain’s energy future. Found within the Conchas Project by Berkeley Energy, the 31 square kilometre site has been hailed financially as a highly significant resource that, if mined efficiently, could meet Spain’s lithium needs, reducing the country’s reliance on imports. Currently, most of the lithium Spanish battery manufacturers use comes from South America. The project, which is still in feasibility studies, promises significant economic growth for the region but faces hurdles. Environmental groups warn that extraction could harm water resources and biodiversity, and they are calling...

KOLWEZI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Little about Kolwezi, a small city in southern Democratic Republic of Congo, hints at its global importance. Nondescript and ringed by slag heaps, pits and quarry lakes, the city is home to some of the largest copper and cobalt mines in the world. Now, Kolwezi is at the center of U.S.-Chinese competition over critical minerals. Earlier this year, mining firms began shipping ore along a U.S.-backed railway that terminates in Angola's Atlantic port of Lobito. A massive infrastructure project is focused on this rail line -- which is viewed as a bid to counter...

California wildfire cleanup challenged by electric and hybrid vehicle batteries.. Highly combustible lithium-ion batteries used in electric and hybrid vehicles are complicating cleanup efforts in the Los Angeles neighborhoods ravaged by wildfire damage. Phase 1 of the federal cleanup is underway, as surveyors with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) work to remove and dispose of hazardous materials, including lithium-ion batteries found in charred vehicles and decimated homes. The EPA warned that batteries should be considered "extremely dangerous," even if they are believed to be intact, and "can spontaneously re-ignite, explode, and emit toxic gases and particulates even after the fire...

Energy from the wind and the sun — they’re clean and green and free. OK, there’s the small problem of intermittency. But clearly the intermittency problem can easily be solved with a few batteries to store some power for the occasional calm nights. Or is that solution really so easy? Regular readers here will know that I wrote an energy storage Report, titled “The Energy Storage Conundrum,” published by the GWPF back in December 2022. After some straightforward calculations based on elementary-school-level arithmetic, that Report concluded that the amount of storage needed was so large, and the costs so completely...

A major fire broke out Thursday at one of the world's largest battery storage plants.The facility, in Moss Landing, northern California, stores energy for general use as part of the state grid, and is a significant part of California's efforts to use cleaner energy.It caught fire Thursday afternoon, officials in Monterey County said, prompting evacuation orders for more than 2,000 people.A Monterey County Sheriff's Office spokesperson told the local news channel KSBW 8 that 40% of the battery plant had burned.A law enforcement spokesperson told CNN that concerns around chemical spills and hazardous material burning had prompted broad evacuation orders....snip...Monterey...

MOSS LANDING, Calif. — A fire has been confirmed at the Vistra Power Plant in Moss Landing on Thursday which is forcing evacuations and closing roads in the area.

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory bodes well for US-Morocco relations. As King Mohamed VI recalled in his statement congratulating Trump on his election win, during his first term, Trump recognized Rabat’s full sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Trump made this recognition with a presidential proclamation on December 10, 2020, in exchange for Morocco reestablishing diplomatic relations with Israel. In his statement, Mohammed VI went on to say that “the Moroccan people will forever be grateful” for this recognition, calling Washington “our longstanding friend and ally.” While Morocco hopes to pick up where it left off in negotiations with...

Executives at Ford Motor Company, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis are begging President-elect Donald Trump to keep in place President Joe Biden’s Electric Vehicle (EV) mandates. The plea comes as automakers have invested billions in EVs that have failed to turn a profit. In March of this year, Biden issued a federal regulation to begin phasing out gas-powered cars, requiring American automakers to produce EVs and ensure that by 2032, the majority of new cars sold in the U.S. market are electric. Since then, Ford, GM, and Stellantis have staked their futures on EVs. The results have been bleak as...

DENVER (KDVR) — Passengers of a Southwest Airlines flight sitting at a Denver International Airport gate had to evacuate after a cell phone battery caught on fire. According to a statement Southwest sent to FOX31, Southwest Airlines Flight 3316 was scheduled to fly to William P. Hobby Airport in Houston on Friday morning. However, all 108 passengers had to evacuate after a phone caught a seat on fire. Per preliminary reports, one person suffered a minor injury during the evacuation and the passenger whose phone caught on fire was being treated for burns, Southwest said. ... Southwest said the passengers...

Watch as numerous fire departments rush to the scene of a major fire at a lithium battery recycling plant in Fredericktown, Missouri, earlier this evening. The blaze, which broke out at the 225,000-square-foot facility owned by Critical Mineral Recovery, led to shelter-in-place advisories and mandatory evacuation orders in the surrounding area. According to its website, the company uses this facility to “recycle lithium-ion battery materials from battery manufacturers, automotive OEMs, battery dealers, recyclers, and processors worldwide,” describing it as “one of the largest lithium-ion battery processing facilities in the world.” All plant workers have been safely accounted for, with only...

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Tesla’s profit for the third quarter increased 17 percent from a year ago, the company said Wednesday, as strong growth in its battery storage and other businesses more than made up for a modest increase in car sales. The company said it earned $2.2 billion from July through September, compared with $1.9 billion in the same period last year. Sales were $25.2 billion, compared with $23.4 billion a year earlier. But Tesla warned investors to expect only “slight growth” in the number of cars it will deliver this year. Tesla shares jumped more than 11 percent in extended trading on...