If you’ve spent any appreciable time in emergency services, you already know that thermal runaway is testing the fire service’s rhythm like nothing has in a generation. Tactics evolve, gear improves, and building construction shifts. However, the fundamentals of how we attack a problem tend to stay grounded in proven science.

Every once in a generation, however, a hazard emerges that fundamentally disrupts those operations, not just technically, but culturally.

Right now, that hazard is the massive, rapid proliferation of lithium-ion energy storage systems (ESS), commercial battery arrays, and electric vehicles. Across North America, special operations teams and incident commanders are responding to high-risk, low-frequency incidents involving thermal runaway, off-gassing, and toxic vapor clouds. Specifically, these hazards simply do not react to standard operating guidelines.

When a hazard outpaces traditional tactics, the primary challenge is no longer just technical. It’s a leadership challenge. Because the rules of engagement are still evolving nationwide, commanders have to actively guard against “tactical drift.” That’s the subtle, dangerous tendency to apply old, familiar habits to an entirely new threat profile. In addition, we have to balance our ingrained firefighter culture of action with the cold, calculated discipline that long-duration, volatile hazards demand.

The Trap of “Tactical Drift” When Thermal Runaway Hits

In technical rescue, success is built on patience and structural discipline. Whether you’re stabilizing a complex trench collapse, executing a heavy vehicle extrication, or managing a high-angle rope system, the principle holds. You don’t jump into a trench until the shoring is set, and you don’t execute a pickoff until systems are rigged and verified.

In structural firefighting, however, our bias is toward aggressive, rapid extinguishment. We are trained to make initial attack, push the line, and suppress the thermal threat.

Tactical drift occurs when those aggressive structural firefighting instincts spill over into dynamic, highly unpredictable special operations environments. Consequently, when a large-scale energy storage system or a heavy EV battery enters thermal runaway, pushing water into the compartment without understanding the off-gassing profile isn’t aggressive firefighting. It’s high-risk speculation.

Thermal runaway isn’t just a fire; it’s a cascading chemical process. It generates toxic, flammable gases like hydrogen and hydrogen fluoride inside confined spaces. Often, that creates an explosive atmosphere long before visible flame or extreme heat manifests on the outside.

If an incident commander treats a thermal runaway event like a routine room-and-contents fire simply because “it looks like smoke,” tactical drift has taken over. As a result, the team is accepting immense, uncalculated risk simply out of habit.

Risk Acceptance vs. Operational Discipline

In special operations, we talk a lot about risk management. In practice, though, true leadership comes down to the line between risk acceptance and operational discipline. Both are predicated on critical factors.

• Risk Acceptance: is a deliberate, conscious decision made by an Incident Commander. It’s based on a clear risk-benefit analysis, such as risking a lot to save a savable life.
• Operational Discipline: is the organizational backbone that prevents us from taking uncalculated risks when there is no life safety benefit. An example is refusing to commit crews into an unventilated hazard zone solely to protect a degraded asset.

With lithium-ion and large-scale ESS hazards, the asset is often already lost the moment deep thermal runaway begins. Therefore, what remains is a prolonged hazard management operation.

Yet, under the pressure of the scene, with visible smoke, bystanders watching, and media cameras rolling, leaders face intense psychological pressure to “do something.”

This is where leadership discipline is tested. Can you hold the line? Can you stand at the command board, look at your company officers, and say: “We are establishing a perimeter, monitoring gas levels, protecting exposures, and waiting for thermal stabilization. We are not committing crews into that structure.”

Holding that boundary requires far more courage than giving the order to stretch a line. It requires the commander to anchor the team in objective science rather than scene anxiety.

Three Operational Rules for Special Ops Leaders Dealing with Evolving Threats

How do we build operational discipline across our crews before the call comes in? Drawing from technical rescue principles and high-reliability organization strategies, here are three operational shifts leaders must drive in their departments.

1. Shift from “Fire Suppression” to “Hazard Mitigation”

When responding to commercial battery installations or EV storage facilities, incident command must immediately reframe the mission mindset. That reframe happens once life safety priorities and primary search needs have been addressed.

• The Goal: It is rarely to “put the fire out” in the first 20 minutes. Instead, it is to isolate the energy source, control the atmosphere, prevent propagation to adjacent cells or structures, and protect life safety. If we need to advance hoselines to gain access to viable victims, we do so decisively. Absent a life-safety mandate, though, our posture shifts.
• The Tooling: Air monitoring, thermal imaging, and continuous gas detection become higher priorities in the initial phase than line placement. So does multi-agency subject matter expertise, including facility engineers.

2. Establish “Stop Work” Authority Grounded in Practical Safety

In high-threat special operations, the least experienced firefighter on scene with a gas monitor might be the first person to detect a problem. That could be an explosive (lower explosive limit – LEL) shift or an unsafe toxic threshold.

If your organizational culture penalizes a junior member for calling out an unseen hazard to a Senior Chief, your command model is broken.

Leaders must explicitly build an environment where speaking up about a hazard anomaly is rewarded, not dismissed. In unknown chemical and thermal environments, practical safety is an operational safety control.

3. Build Multi-Agency & Regional Interoperability Early

Lithium-ion and ESS incidents are inherently long-duration events. They exhaust air supplies and require specialized foam or massive continuous water flows for cooling (at the right time). In addition, they demand specialized HazMat monitoring over 12 to 36 hours, or longer.

You cannot build relationships or joint standard operating guidelines on the scene of a 3-alarm commercial battery fire. Regional coordination must happen before these incidents occur. Specifically, that means aligning HazMat teams, special operations units, utility providers, and local law enforcement into a unified command structure.

The Human Element: Managing the Stress of the Unknown

There’s a unique psychological toll that comes with commanding incidents where the hazard is invisible. When you’re fighting a fire you can see, your brain processes the threat directly. On the other hand, when you are managing an off-gassing container filled with invisible, highly toxic, explosive gases, the stress on command is quiet, persistent, and heavy.

As leaders, we must recognize that our teams feel that stress, too. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, and anxiety can lead to either hesitation or reckless over-action.

Leading through these “unseen hazards” requires transparency and calm authority.

• Acknowledge the unknown: Tell your officers what you know, what you don’t know, and what parameters you are measuring before moving to the next tactical phase.
• Pacing the incident: Remind the team that time is usually on our side when exposures are protected. We don’t rush an unstable trench, and we don’t rush an unstable energy storage system.
• Debrief the decisions: After the incident, sit down with the crews. Don’t just critique the tactics; explain the command reasoning. Help them understand why holding the perimeter was the right tactical decision, even if it felt counterintuitive in the moment.

Evolving the Service Without Losing Our Soul

The fire service will always be defined by its commitment to show up on someone’s worst day and solve the problem. That willingness to step into chaos is why many of us do this job.

But as technology shifts, our definition of courage must evolve alongside it. Today, leadership courage isn’t measured by how far into the danger zone we can push. Instead, it’s measured by our ability to make disciplined, scientifically grounded decisions under extreme pressure, protecting our communities and our members.

To be clear: in this business, we risk a lot to save a lot. Still, we must carefully evaluate risking lives or firefighter disability when facing incalculable hazards without a life-safety payback. When facing the unseen hazards of tomorrow, operational discipline is our strongest tool. This is the same ground I covered in Leadership Under Pressure: What Business Leaders Can Learn from Technical Rescue, and it holds whether the crew is in turnout gear or business casual.

The Bottom Line

Thermal runaway doesn’t respond to instinct, and it doesn’t reward speed for speed’s sake. It rewards commanders who can hold a perimeter, trust their monitoring data, and separate risking a lot to save a lot from risking everything to protect an asset that’s already gone. Build that discipline into your SOGs and your tabletop drills now, before the next commercial battery fire tests it for you. That’s the kind of organization-wide discipline worth building before the next incident tests it. If your department needs help building it, let’s start with a conversation about what that would look like for your crews.

In Your Lab This Week

• Reflection: Look at your department’s current SOGs for battery/ESS incidents. Are your initial operational parameters clear, or are your crews defaulting to standard structural attack tactics?
• Practice: In your next tabletop exercise, present a scenario involving a heavy commercial off-gassing event. Explicitly practice the command decision to hold, monitor, and isolate once savable lives are accounted for and addressed. Walk your company officers through the “why” behind any delay in offensive action.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

The Incident Command Team: Strategic Infrastructure for Technical Rescue Success – Scott Richardson, Firehouse Magazine, March 2026.

Hazard Assessment of Lithium-Ion Battery Energy Storage Systems – NFPA Fire Protection Research Foundation.

https://www.epa.gov/electronics-batteries-management/battery-energy-storage-systems-main-considerations-safe – Unites States Environmental Protection Agency.

About the Author

Scott Richardson has spent more than 40 years in the fire service, starting as a volunteer firefighter at age 16. He is Division Chief of Special Operations at South Metro Fire Rescue, where he has served for 30 years, a FEMA USAR rescue specialist with Colorado Task Force 1, and a combat medic from Desert Storm. He is the author of Technical Rescue: Trench Levels I and II (Cengage Learning) and a regular contributor to Firehouse Magazine. Co-founder of Empower2Evolve alongside his wife, Ann Mosso, Scott brings four decades of high-stakes command experience to fire, EMS, law enforcement, and emergency communications leaders, translating what it takes to lead people through the hardest moments into practical guidance for anyone leading under pressure.