Warehouse Fire in Poland Reveals Critical Failures in Battery Safety, Training, and Duty of Care
- kevinsdoyle
- Jan 21
- 2 min read
By Kevin Doyle, EdDKevin Doyle Consulting, LLC
A devastating warehouse fire in Tarnowo Podgórne, Poland, believed to have originated from a shipment of electric scooter batteries, is drawing international attention — not only because of the fire's scale, but also because video footage reveals failures in training and preparedness.
Surveillance and publicly released footage show a pallet of boxed batteries igniting suddenly. Even more concerning, an employee is seen attempting to extinguish the fire without any visible personal protective equipment (PPE) and without taking appropriate evacuation measures.
This moment matters.
🔋 What the Footage Shows — and Why It’s Alarming
Video evidence indicates:
A battery fire begins without direct human interaction
An employee approaches the fire without PPE
The individual attempts to fight the fire rather than evacuate
No immediate evidence of trained response or isolation procedures
These actions strongly suggest that the employee had not received appropriate training for lithium-ion battery incidents!
Lithium-ion battery fires are not conventional fires. Once thermal runaway begins, these events can escalate rapidly, produce toxic gases, re-ignite after suppression, and overwhelm untrained responders within seconds.
⚠️ This Is Not an Employee Failure — It’s a Systems Failure
When an unprotected worker attempts to fight a battery fire, the issue is not judgment, it is organizational responsibility.
From a Duty of Care perspective, employers are responsible for ensuring that employees:
Understand when NOT to intervene
Are trained to recognize battery fire behavior
Know evacuation thresholds and emergency protocols
Are never placed in situations requiring PPE or skills they were not provided
No employee should be improvising during a lithium-ion fire.
🧭 Duty of Care: Training Is Not Optional
Once an organization stores, transports, or services lithium-ion batteries, the risks are well known and well documented. Duty of Care requires proactive action, including:
✔️ Hazard-specific training for employees
✔️ Clear guidance on do-not-fight fire scenarios
✔️ Defined evacuation and isolation procedures
✔️ Access restrictions to battery storage areas
✔️ Coordination with emergency responders familiar with battery fires
Allowing or expecting untrained employees to respond to such incidents exposes organizations to severe legal, ethical, and operational consequences.
🔥 The Bigger Lesson
This fire was not just about battery chemistry or storage practices. It was about:
Training gaps
Unclear emergency protocols
Assumptions that “someone will know what to do.”
Modern hazards demand modern preparation. The presence of video evidence makes one reality clear: organizations must prepare people, not just facilities.
📣 Final Thought
Innovation without preparation creates risk.
At Kevin Doyle Consulting, we help organizations identify where technology adoption has outpaced training, planning, and Duty of Care — and close those gaps before incidents occur.
Because when something goes wrong, the footage will tell the story.
Contact us today to set up the Li-Ion Battery Training you and your staff need.
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