Are there 45 electric firetrucks in Los Angeles that had to go back to the fire department for 10 hours a day to recharge while the January 2025 wildfires burned? No, that's not true: There are not 45 electric firetrucks in Los Angeles across all of the fire departments, according to a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson. The LAFD "has only one electric fire engine and no electric fire trucks." The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection currently has no electric fire engines, that agency told Lead Stories.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) where it was published on Facebook on January 16, 2025. It opened:
45 of Los Angeles fire trucks have to go back to the fire department for 10 hours a day to recharge instead of fighting fires after refueling in 7 minutes this is why electric vehicles don't belong anywhere near public safety services
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jan 20 19:42:28 2025 UTC)
"There are not 45 electric fire trucks in Los Angeles across all of the fire departments," Margaret Stewart, public service officer for the Los Angeles Fire Department (archived here) told Lead Stories via email on January 20, 2025.
She continued:
The LAFD has only one electric fire engine and no electric fire trucks. Those are two very different types of apparatus (truck vs engine).
The Los Angeles City Fire Department (LAFD) purchased an electric fire engine and it is assigned to Fire Station 82 in Hollywood, as the department announced in a 2020 press release (archived here) shared with Lead Stories by Stewart. The electric fire engine was manufactured by the company Rosenbauer and the company website (archived here) provides details about the vehicle. According to the press release, the engine could operate for "roughly" two hours and had an "on-board diesel generator" for longer periods:
The pre-series engine based on the CFT will have two batteries with a charge capacity of 100 kilowatt hours. This enables fully electric operation for roughly two hours and an on-board diesel generator can be activated for extended operations. The LAFD will equip the station that houses the electric engine with rapid-charging technology to ensure the apparatus is always ready to respond to calls for service.
According to the Rosenbauer website (archived here), the "The RTX has the ability to take up to a 150 kW at once which means that the batteries can reach full efficiency in almost no time," as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Rosenbauer America website screenshot taken on Mon Jan 20 23:34:11 2025 UTC)
A spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (archived here) denied having electric vehicles to Lead Stories via email on January 20, 2025:
CAL FIRE currently has no electric fire engines.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection explains the difference between a fire engine and a firetruck on their website (archived here):
The most common fire department vehicle you'll see is a fire engine. Engines are different from trucks (carrying long ladders), ambulances (for transporting people to hospitals), and other vehicles.
A fire engine typically carries firefighters to a fire or emergency. The engine often has three key components on board: hoses, a tank that holds water, and a pump that supplies the hoses with water. This type of fire engine is called a "Triple Combination Engine" or "Triple for short.
A typical modern fire engine will carry tools for a wide range of firefighting and rescue tasks, with common equipment including ladders, self-contained breathing apparatus, ventilating equipment, first aid kits, and hydraulic rescue tools.
A fire truck is typically the long aerial ladder trucks you see on the way to a large fire or certain types of medical emergencies. For certain medical emergencies, more firefighters are needed to assist, which is why you sometimes see trucks or engines in addition to an ambulance at the scene of a medical incident.
For more Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving the Los Angeles wildfires, click here.
