Cordless tools are a WHS fire risk your site can't ignore

Walk onto any Australian construction, warehouse or trade site and you'll find lithium-ion batteries everywhere: cordless drills and saws, two-way radios, drones, survey gear, e-bikes. They're so ordinary that the fire risk they carry is easy to miss, right up until a battery on charge in the site shed goes into thermal runaway.

Fire and Rescue NSW attended 332 lithium-ion battery fires in 2025, up from 272 in 2023, and the trend is still climbing (Checkpoint Group, 2026; Fire and Rescue NSW [FRNSW], 2024). For a person conducting a business or undertaking, that is no longer just a safety concern; it's a work health and safety obligation.

What the law now expects

Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, every PCBU must identify hazards and control the risks their workers face, and lithium-ion batteries are squarely one of them. In NSW a specific duty now applies: workplaces that use, handle or store 25,000 kg or more of lithium batteries must prepare an emergency plan addressing battery fire risk and lodge it with Fire and Rescue NSW (Fire and Rescue NSW [FRNSW], n.d.). That threshold targets large storage sites and some depots, but the underlying duty of care applies to every site, whatever the volume. New NSW battery legislation in 2026 also introduced penalties of up to $880,000 for non-compliant battery suppliers (Checkpoint Group, 2026).

"We had an extinguisher on the wall" isn't a plan

After an incident, a WHS investigation will ask what you did to manage a known risk. A single extinguisher is not the answer. A defensible approach covers five things.

• Risk assessment. Identify where batteries are charged, stored and used, and what could go wrong.
• Safe charging and storage. Charge on non-combustible surfaces away from exits and combustibles, use compliant chargers, and isolate damaged or swollen packs, ideally in fire-resistant containment.
• Early detection and training. Train workers to spot the warning signs, swelling, heat, odd smells, hissing, and to act on them.
• Response capability. Position lithium-ion fire equipment near charging points, and have a plan that makes clear when to stop, evacuate and call 000.
• Documentation. Keep records of your assessment, procedures, training and equipment checks.

The sites that handle this well treat batteries like any other site hazard: assessed, controlled, documented and trained for. Given the trend in incidents and the regulator's growing focus, getting ahead of it is far cheaper than explaining afterwards why you didn't.