Discover what it's like to deal with an overturned truck full of burning batteries.

A truck loaded with lithium-ion batteries overturned near the Port of Los Angeles on September 26, causing an explosion and a fire that lasted several days. This incident disrupted traffic on the highways, affected a bridge, and closed terminals at the port. A local towing service, Pepe’s Towing Service, managed to capture the explosion on video and documented the situation in the following days until it was time to remove the wreckage.

Josh Acosta, owner of Pepe’s Towing Service, uploaded extensive footage showing the moment of the explosion, the long wait while the fire department allowed the batteries to burn, and the process of lifting the container full of burnt batteries for transport. The images show multiple stacks of batteries with liquid cooling tubes between each layer.

In a phone conversation, Acosta mentioned that it was a "giant battery container" that "cannot be disassembled." According to him, this battery could be used in buildings as backup power and weighed 60,000 pounds.

Acosta does not remember which company owned the container, although the visible text on its side is blurred in his video. The recorded material also illustrates the complicated logistics firefighters face when dealing with burning lithium cells; they often need to use thousands of gallons of water to extinguish these fires, which also applies to electric vehicle fires. In this case, the Los Angeles Fire Department indicated that the fire continued to flare up intermittently.

The owner of Pepe’s Towing was called to the scene by the customer who owned the overturned truck, which is why he recorded the moment of the explosion. Currently, Pepe’s Towing is in charge of transporting the remains of the container for recycling.