Photos and reporting by Stacie Joy
The FDNY responded after 8 p.m. to a fire at 172 E. Fourth St., a 12-story residential building on the southwest corner of Avenue A.
Sources at the scene said a lithium-ion battery overheated and the pack exploded inside a 10th-floor apartment.
There was an initial report that a resident of the apartment suffered burns. We don't have further information at the moment on the person's condition.
The response brought a large FDNY presence to the intersection, with Avenue A shut down to traffic. Onlookers packed the sidewalk across the street in front of Key Food.
As firefighters checked adjacent apartments on the building's east side, the sound of breaking glass could be heard from the street.
It was not immediately clear how much damage the apartment or neighboring units sustained.
Hi, I live on the 10th floor here. Everything reported above is correct. The resident of the apt where the fire started has been taken to hospital with what we have been told are minor burns. It is believed there are no other injuries. and that the source of the fire was a battery from an e-bike.
ReplyDeleteNow I know why my super gets upset when people leave these in the lobby.
ReplyDeleteThey need to permanently ban these.
ReplyDeletethe whole city would be better if e-bikes and scooters were banned
ReplyDeletei agree!
DeleteI agree! 💯 dangerous in many ways!
DeleteThere was a fire here a few months ago too. Glad the person is okay and it’s minor. Scary!
ReplyDeleteI am the resident who was in the apartment and burnt while trying to mitigate and slow down the damages, mostly 3rd degree burns on my left hand and right foot.
ReplyDeleteBike was a super73 S2 with stock battery and stock electronics, i rode it and it was doing great like an hour before the incident.
Apartment is in really bad shape
Horrifying that you would jeopardize the safety of yourself and hundreds of neighbors in this coop building. Your coop board would be remiss if they fail to revoke your proprietary lease ( assuming you are an owner ) and evict you. At a bare minimum your negligence will cause your building insurance rates to likely triple as they did for us in your sister building after the stationery store fire a few years ago.
DeleteHey, I would be glad to have these batteries banned or at least banned from residential buildings, but do you know the house rules of this building such that you can assume he/she was breaking them, or even that he/she was behaving negligently? A person ought to be able to assume that a standard commercial product properly serviced (if necessary) isn't going to freaking catch fire. Have a little compassion.
DeleteTo resident, thanks for the info and so sorry this happened to you!!
ReplyDeleteIn the building I live in e-bikes are not allowed. But it’s also a smoke-free building and people still smoke.
ReplyDeleteThe management of 172 e 4th sent out an email a while back saying bikes and scooter with this type of battery were prohibited, the damage caused by this on a personal level are more far reaching, , senior citizen with dogs having to go up and down 12 flights, a resident who just returned from a major surgery having a medical setback, thanks to Jacko who couldn’t or wouldn’t listen to rules, ban ebikes
ReplyDeleteI’m a long time resident and coop member at 172 east 4th. When I used to sublet here, I never received the management company emails — so our neighbor may not have even gotten that memo, if he’s a renter. And even if he is on the listserv, given the copious number of irrelevant emails we get (which are often in embedded PDFs), it can be hard to keep track of important notes, like the one you reference, that get pushed out. (FWIW, I just tried to find the email you referenced in my own inbox, and only turned up something from 2022 on lithium battery safety tips - so these notices are not easy to find even if you’re actively searching for the info like I just was). Buildings would certainly benefit from more prominently displaying prohibitions on e-bikes and e-scooters so residents are at least definitely on notice about such prohibitions (to the extent they exist — I haven’t seen anything from Buchbinder’s latest slew of emails that indicate they are actually banned).
DeleteTo our neighbor on 10 - I’m relieved to hear you’re recovering.
All of this finger-wagging when the resident followed all the charging instructions, was the only person to get injured, it happened while everyone was awake, and the fire was highly contained. Everyone is extremely lucky this was a fire that was kept small and extinguished quickly because precautions were taken. This is a major improvement from the fires that happened a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing is that this model of bike is sold as UL "compliant". It's not directly certified by UL. This kind of labeling feels misleading and should be banned. A UL-certified battery would be directly tested against the risk of fires like these and would not just be a reference design.
But also, if you are considering buying anything like this, buy it from a major US brand that sells it in department stores. These devices have almost no recorded charging incidents at all. There is too much nonsense happening with imported devices from online stores. It's not worth it.
E bike batteries are widely known to be dangerous. Let’s not act like people don’t know the fire risks and proceed anyways. It’s negligent.
DeleteAlso, as a previous commenter already stated, the loss of elevator service for the entire building puts a number of residents in a real bind.
@Anonymous laptop batteries and phone batteries are the same battery material. They're not inherently unsafe in normal operation. That's misinformation.
DeleteThere are circumstances where unsafe designs or unsafe use can cause a cell to combust. Even then, certified batteries have electronics to prevent that + many have physically-separated and insulated cells so that one cell won't ignite the whole pack. Which is why the aim should be to get UL-certified batteries that meet high standards for safety. And that should be the requirement for multi-family buildings and to insure the apartment.
This guy's battery pack seems to not meet those standards, based on a quick lookup of the model of bike he bought. (Note: the rest of the bicycle has no combustion risk)
Consumers tend to be quite interested in this stuff because it's also not good for the battery to explode between one's legs while riding it in the street! Maybe this particular model needs a recall, and this is how we're finding out.
People buy generic or counterfeit batteries.
ReplyDelete