16 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY MARCH 27-APRIL 2, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com A catastrophic battery fire in Moss Landing caught everyone on their heels. How did we get here, and where are we going? By David Schmalz POWER STRUGGLEJust before 5pm on April 19, 2019, an alarm was triggered by smoke at a small battery energy storage facility in Surprise, Arizona. Firefighters responded to the scene after a call came over dispatch at 5:42pm reporting smoke near a major highway. The firefighters were expecting a brushfire, but once it became clear they were dealing with a lithium-ion battery storage facility, the captain called in a team of firefighters trained and equipped to respond to hazardous materials. After arriving on the scene and gathering information, the four-member hazmat team donned their turnout gear at about 6:37pm. Low-lying smoke was emanating from the facility, and the team’s equipment registered toxic gases in the vapor. After waiting it out for about 80 minutes, the gases decreased to a safe enough threshold, and the team approached the building. At around 8:01pm, they opened a door, unaware the facility lacked adequate ventilation. The inrush of oxygen created a backdraft, and as the team stood outside the door measuring gases and sizing things up, the gases ignited just before 8:04pm, causing an explosion that shot out the door about 75 feet horizontally and 20 feet vertically. All four firefighters were blown back and knocked unconscious—the team’s captain, who was standing in the doorway, was launched 73 feet, landing under a bush. The four were quickly transported to a hospital, two by helicopter. As lithium-ion batteries burned inside Vistra’s Moss 300 battery energy storage facility in Moss Landing, there was no way for firefighters to fight the fire—spraying water inside could even cause it to grow. In Vistra’s 2018 application to the county for the Moss 300 project, it stated that the structure that would house the batteries—a disused, former turbine building—was “robust concrete with steel columns, girders and beams and will be considered non-combustible.” Photos by Daniel Dreifuss
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