Forklifts, E-Bikes and Mobility Scooters: Getting the Fire Blanket Size Right

Equipment guide

The lithium-ion equipment most likely to fail is also the equipment most likely to be charging indoors, overnight, in a space nobody is watching. Forklifts in the charging bay. Mobility scooters in an aged care corridor. E-bikes in a garage or a bike room. When one of those goes into thermal runaway, the size of your fire blanket decides whether you can actually cover it.

Most sites buy a fire blanket the way they buy a first aid kit: one item, tick the box, hope it never comes out of the bag. Lithium-ion changes that logic. A blanket that is too small does not partly work. It leaves an open edge, the fire vents around it, and the person holding it is now standing over an uncontained battery.

This is a sizing guide for the equipment that sits between a single e-bike and a full-size passenger EV: the 5m x 5m class of containment blanket, and what it is genuinely built to cover.

The risk is in the charging bay, not the car park

Electric cars attract the headlines. The incident data does not follow them. The equipment burning most often is the smaller, cheaper, harder-working gear: forklifts and pallet jacks on shift charge, e-bikes and e-scooters on cheap replacement chargers, mobility scooters plugged in beside a bed. All of it is typically charged inside a building, frequently overnight, and often within a few metres of people, stock or an exit path.

That is the scenario a containment blanket is bought for. Not a highway incident, but a Tuesday night in a warehouse.

Why a lithium-ion fire is a different job

A conventional fire needs oxygen from the room. Cut the oxygen and the fire stops. A cell in thermal runaway breaks that rule: the cathode material decomposes and releases oxygen internally, so the reaction feeds itself. Heat from the first failing cell then drives its neighbours into runaway, which is why these fires escalate in a way that looks disproportionate to the size of the battery.

Three consequences matter when you are choosing equipment:

• It reignites. A pack that appears to be out can re-enter runaway minutes or hours later, because heat is still propagating through cells that have not yet failed.
• The smoke is toxic. Electrolyte decomposition produces hydrogen fluoride and other irritant gases, which is a serious problem in an enclosed charging area or a corridor.
• It is directional. Cells vent with force. Flame and gas leave the pack as jets, not as a gentle plume, so containment needs to hold shape under pressure and heat.

None of that means a blanket is useless. It means you need to be honest about the job it does: it smothers surface flame, cuts radiant heat, holds the fire over its own footprint and stops it spreading into the racking, the vehicle beside it or the building. It buys the minutes between discovery and the fire brigade arriving.

Size is a specification decision, not an upsell

The common mistake is buying to the footprint of the machine. A blanket that measures roughly the same as the equipment will land on top of it and stop there, leaving the sides open. Heat and gas then vent sideways, which is the exact failure you were trying to prevent.

Three things need to fit inside the dimensions:

• Footprint. The plan area of the machine, including forks, handlebars, footplates and anything protruding.
• Drape. Height matters as much as length. The blanket has to fall down the sides, not tent across the top.
• Skirt. Material that reaches the floor and stays there, sealing the perimeter. Allow for it, or you have a lid rather than a seal.

A practical rule: work out the footprint, add the height of the equipment on each side for drape, then add a further margin for skirt and for the fact that two people throwing a blanket under pressure will never land it perfectly centred.

What the 5m x 5m actually covers

Run that calculation on the equipment most sites are charging indoors and 5m x 5m is where it lands. It is the size that handles machinery, not just devices.

Equipment	Typical setting	Blanket size
Single e-bike, e-scooter, tool battery or device on charge	Home garage, apartment, bike room, office	2m x 2m
Forklifts and pallet jacks, mobility scooters and motorised wheelchairs, e-bikes and e-scooters, golf buggies, small machinery, small cars	Warehouse charging bay, workshop, aged care, retail, communal charge point	5m x 5m
Full-size passenger EV or hybrid	Car park, dealership, service centre, fleet depot	6m x 8m

The 5m x 5m silicon-coated blanket is silicone-coated fibreglass, weighs about 13.8kg, carries a rated working temperature of 1100 degrees C and ships with a storage bag and a 12-month warranty. The weight is worth noting at specification stage: it is a two-person deployment by design, and that should be built into your procedure rather than discovered on the night.

If your risk is a full-size electric car, this is not the right blanket. Go up to the 6m x 8m in the EV fire blanket range. If your risk is a single battery on a bench, a containment bag is the more sensible control, because it isolates the battery before anything happens rather than after.

Standards: what exists, and what does not

This is where buyers get misled, so it is worth being plain about it.

There is currently no Australian Standard that classifies extinguishing or containment equipment for lithium-ion battery fires. AS 1841 covers portable fire extinguishers, but it has no lithium-ion classification, a position confirmed in our own discussions with certification bodies and CSIRO. Any product marketed as "AS 1841 certified for lithium-ion" is claiming something the standard does not yet offer.

What does exist is European testing. The blanket range is tested to EN 13501, the European reaction-to-fire classification system, which measures how the fabric itself behaves when exposed to fire. It is a rigorous, independently conducted benchmark, and it is the right thing to ask a supplier for. It is also not the same thing as a containment rating for a battery fire, and we do not present it as one.

Deployment: 60 to 90 seconds, two people, one practice run

Equipment that nobody has handled is equipment that fails under stress. A 5m x 5m blanket at 13.8kg is not intuitive the first time. Build the following into your procedure:

1. Call 000 first. Not after. The blanket buys time for a response that is already on its way.
2. Assess before you approach. If the fire has spread beyond the equipment, if the space is filling with smoke, or if venting is violent, do not deploy. Evacuate and close the door behind you.
3. Deploy from upwind, two people, one at each edge. Walk it over the equipment and let it fall down the sides. Do not throw it from a standing distance and hope.
4. Seal the perimeter. Make sure the skirt is on the floor all the way around.
5. Do not lift it to check. Lifting reintroduces oxygen and exposes you to a vent. Leave it in place for the brigade.
6. Get clear and stay clear. Toxic gas is the immediate hazard to people, and the pack can reignite.

Run one dry deployment when the blanket arrives, with no fire involved. Time it. Most teams land between 60 and 90 seconds with two people, and that single practice run is the difference between a controlled response and a fumbled one. Once used on a fire, the blanket is replaced.

How many, and where they go

One blanket in a store room is a compliance gesture. Placement is what makes it a control.

• Position by charging zone, not by building. Every charging area needs its own blanket within a few seconds of walking distance, in clear line of sight.
• Mount and sign it. Wall-mounted or in a labelled cabinet, with location signage so a night shift worker or a visiting contractor can find it without asking.
• Pair it with the right extinguisher. A blanket contains. A lithium-ion rated extinguisher cools, which addresses propagation into cells that have not yet failed. The two do different jobs and larger sites should carry both.
• Write it into the emergency plan. Name the equipment, its location, who deploys it and the call-000-first sequence, then cover it at induction and toolbox talks.
• Multi-site operators should standardise. The same blanket, in the same place, with the same procedure across every depot removes the guesswork when staff move between sites.

Stocked in Australia and dispatched within 48 hours.

This article is general guidance only and does not replace a site-specific risk assessment, your emergency plan or the direction of emergency services. In any fire, call 000 first. Product specifications are current at the time of publication.