Photos by Steven
A fire broke out early this morning at 131 Avenue A on the NW corner of St. Mark's Place.
According to ABC 7, five residents sustained minor injuries while vacating the six-floor building.
Starbucks was open today for business in the retail spaces, while TabeTomo next door told us that they suffered “substantial damage.”
Next door, Bad Habit hope to be back open tomorrow...
FIRE HAS CAUSED EXTENSIVE WATER, SMOKE AND FIRE DAMAGE IN APT#1, ALSO FIREFIGHTER OPERATIONS IN APT#7. WINDOWS AND WALLS HAVE BEEN REMOVED LEAVING STRUCTURES OPEN TO THE ELEMENTS. THESE POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS HAVE THEREFORE RENDERED UNSAFE TO OCCUPY. VACATE APT #1 AND 7. EGRESS WAS NOT COMPROMISED.
Firefighters recovered a lithium-ion battery from a unit, per ABC 7, though fire officials haven't stated that was officially the cause. Another resident mentioned talk of an "electric scooter explosion."
2 comments:
These batteries are a known danger.
Yet, the city has allowed JOCO/Grubhub to locate a delivery bike charging station on 12th street at the corner of Avenue A.
This presents a considerable danger to individuals living above the battery charging shop and in adjacent buildings.
And, to a lesser degree, there is the everyday danger of the delivery bike drivers who speed up and down the sidewalks and wrong ways on our streets.
Most of these batteries don't explode and devices are built with safeguards to prevent overcharging. Seems most of the fires are from people intentionally circumventing the safeguards to "charge faster"... or are from electrical fires occurring near the batteries, which just makes them "fires".
Seems a resident was charging one overnight. The instructions tell you not to do that. Mostly, that is so that you can unplug it if you are using an extension cord or charger that has a problem and begins to give off smells from melting. You can easily avoid catching nearby things on fire this way, but not if you're sleeping through it.
Same thing with half of the "ebike repair shop fires". It's from unattended charging and improper overloading of circuits. Your electrical line needs to be able to handle the amount of amps being drawn from it, or else it will overheat. Someone owning ONE scooter cannot do that to a household circuit, not even with charging two batteries. An air conditioner draws far more power. But... if you put two battery chargers connected to a dollar store electrical cord that gets stuff piled on top of it, you will have a problem.
FDNY ought to communicate this because it's so often the source of so many other apartment fires, too - particularly with fans and space heaters. The heaters themselves are pretty safe, but draw a lot of power and need to be connected in an appropriate way to the power supply.
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