Emergency Action Plan Language for a Lithium-Ion Battery Fire

Which plan does a lithium-ion battery belong in?

Both, and they are different documents with different required contents. Most employers have one and assume it covers the other.

8 CCR 3220 is the Emergency Action Plan. It governs what people do once something is happening: evacuate, account for everyone, report. 8 CCR 3221 is the Fire Prevention Plan. It governs what you do beforehand: identify the hazard, control the ignition sources, and name the equipment that can control a fire involving them.

A lithium-ion pack shows up in both. The fire prevention plan has to identify it as a fire hazard and say what protection applies to it. The emergency action plan has to say what happens when it starts venting.

Both must be in writing. Both carry the same small employer exception: "For those employers with 10 or fewer employees the plan may be communicated orally to employees and the employer need not maintain a written plan." If you are over ten, you need the document.

What does 8 CCR 3220 actually require?

Six elements, at a minimum. Quoted verbatim, with what each one needs to say when there is a lithium-ion pack on site.

Required element What it needs to say
(1) "Procedures for emergency evacuation, including type of evacuation and exit route assignments" Name a route that does not pass the charging area. A pack venting in a corridor removes that corridor.
(2) "Procedures to be followed by employees who remain to operate critical plant operations before they evacuate" For most contractors this is one sentence: nobody remains.
(3) "Procedures to account for all employees after emergency evacuation has been completed" Name the assembly point and state that it is upwind and clear of the equipment.
(4) "Procedures to be followed by employees performing rescue or medical duties" State plainly that no employee performs fire suppression on a battery. This is the single most protective line in the document.
(5) "The preferred means of reporting fires and other emergencies" Name who calls 911 and what they say, including the chemistry and the approximate capacity.
(6) "Names or regular job titles of persons or departments who can be contacted for further information or explanation of duties under the plan" A name, not a department that does not exist on a job site.

What does 8 CCR 3221 require?

Three elements, and the first one is where the lithium-ion problem actually lives.

8 CCR 3221(b)(1) requires the plan to list: "Potential fire hazards and their proper handling and storage procedures, potential ignition sources (such as welding, smoking and others) and their control procedures, and the type of fire protection equipment or systems which can control a fire involving them."

Read the last clause again. You have to name the type of fire protection equipment that can control a fire involving the hazard. For a lithium-ion battery, California's own fire authority now says no listed portable extinguisher exists for that purpose. Information Bulletin 26-007, issued 28 August 2026: "There are currently no ANSI/UL standards for testing and listing portable fire extinguishers for the extinguishment of lithium-ion battery fires."

That does not excuse the requirement. It changes what an honest answer looks like. The plan should state what the extinguisher present is for, which per the same bulletin is preventing "the spread of fire to surrounding materials such as paper, cardboard, and plastics," and state that suppression of the battery itself is a fire service function.

(b)(2) and (b)(3) require names or job titles for whoever maintains the fire protection equipment and whoever controls accumulation of flammable or combustible waste. On a job site with a charging area, the second one is not paperwork. Cardboard and packaging stacked next to a charging pack is the exposure the extinguisher is there to address.

What should the response section say, word for word?

Here is the structure we write for clients. Adapt it to your site rather than copying it blind, and put your own equipment and names in it.

  1. Trigger at the signs, not at flame. "Any employee who observes an unusual smell, heat, a change in shape, abnormal behavior, a leak or an odd noise from a battery or a charging device shall stop charging or operation, clear the area, and notify [name]." Every published source agrees on those cues, at every size of battery.
  2. Evacuate and call. "No employee shall attempt to extinguish a fire involving a lithium-ion battery. Employees shall evacuate by [route] to [assembly point] and [name] shall call 911 and report the battery chemistry and approximate capacity."
  3. Keep people back. FIRESCOPE ICS 1150 recommends isolating non-emergency personnel at "330 feet or 100 meters as determined by the Emergency Response Guidebook for gases." That is an isolation distance during the event, not a storage distance afterward, and the two get mixed up constantly.
  4. Say what happens afterward. Where the unit goes, how far, who watches it and for how long. The KION rescue guides for Linde and STILL industrial trucks call for isolating the truck or battery "min 10 m away from buildings, flammable materials, and other trucks." EnerSys gives the only duration figure we have found in a manufacturer document: "Batteries should be stored in a safe place outside (access restriction, hazard indications) for a minimum of 72 hours."

Agreeing the removal arrangement with a hazardous materials contractor before the event costs nothing and is impossible during one.

Why no employee should fight it

Because every responder document assumes equipment nobody on a construction site is wearing. The USFA and NHTSA operations guide of July 2025 states that with confirmed or suspected battery fires "the use of SCBA is mandatory," because the products of combustion "can include hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acids, aromatic hydrocarbons and other known carcinogens."

FIRESCOPE says the same for its own people: "Ensure all personnel are wearing full structure fire PPE with a donned SCBA." An employee with a ten pound extinguisher has none of the protection every one of these documents treats as the starting point, and since 28 August 2026 has a state bulletin telling him the extinguisher has no listing for the job.

The comparison of what the manufacturers themselves say to use is in our brief on what actually goes on the fire. They do not agree with each other, which is a further reason not to put an employee in that position.

How this page was verified

Sections 3220 and 3221 were read in full on the Department of Industrial Relations site on 11 September 2026 and every element quoted above is verbatim from them, including the ten employee exception. The CAL FIRE bulletin text was extracted from the bulletin itself. The FIRESCOPE, USFA and manufacturer quotations were taken from those documents rather than from commentary about them.

Every regulation quoted on this page was read in the original on the Department of Industrial Relations site or in the source document, not recalled. Where a question has no settled answer we say so rather than inventing one.

Who wrote this

M Squared Safety Solutions, Inc. is a California occupational safety consultancy and training provider in San Clemente. This page was written by Matthew Horovitz, Competent Person and former OSHA 500 authorized construction outreach trainer, with 20 years in risk management. It is free to read and free to quote with attribution.

What we do about this. We write the plan language for the specific pack on your site, record the determination where the published sources conflict, and train the people who will be standing there. Call 949-954-6581 or book a call.

Related guides

Primary sources

This page describes what the standards say. It is not a safety program, and whether any procedure is right for a particular job site and a particular battery is a determination for that employer, its own competent person, the equipment manufacturer and the authority having jurisdiction.