A ramp employee reported a bag of lithium batteries on the ramp near an aircraft smoked for thirty m...

Attributes
ACN	1268284
Time
Date	201506
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Commercial Fixed Wing
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Parked
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Ramp
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Deviation - Procedural Hazardous Material Violation Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown

Narrative:

Bag [on] ramp caught on fire. The reason was it was full of batteries of different sort. Some of them were lithium batteries. Bag smoked on the ground for thirty minutes then it caught fire. Took three fire extinguishers to put it out. This caused a flight to be delayed and had to move to another gate and possible threat of doing more damage not knowing what was in the bag. There was a tremendous amount of smoke that could have been poison because of not knowing what was in the bag. How can we avoid this happening again?

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A ramp employee reported a bag of lithium batteries on the ramp near an aircraft smoked for thirty minutes then caught fire. The batteries produced large amounts of toxic smoke.

Narrative: Bag [on] ramp caught on fire. The reason was it was full of batteries of different sort. Some of them were lithium batteries. Bag smoked on the ground for thirty minutes then it caught fire. Took three fire extinguishers to put it out. This caused a flight to be delayed and had to move to another gate and possible threat of doing more damage not knowing what was in the bag. There was a tremendous amount of smoke that could have been poison because of not knowing what was in the bag. How can we avoid this happening again?

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.