Lithium-ion battery fire danger warning from FDNY

The dangerous results of a lithium-ion battery fire were on display Wednesday.

A charred moped after its battery sparked a massive fire in March at a Bronx supermarket that injured seven people.

What was left of an e-bike after its lithium-ion battery caught fire the next month, killing a 7-year-old boy and a 19-year-old woman in Queens.

E-scooter remnants with batteries suspected of going up in flames and killing three people Sunday inside a Brooklyn home.

On Wednesday, the FDNY displayed what remains of these e-mobility devices to warn of the potentially dire consequences of lithium-ion batteries — particularly before the holiday season. The department joined federal officials and national fire safety organizations to launch a national campaign about the perils of the batteries and the devices containing them.

So far this year, 17 people in the city have died of such fires — up from none in 2020, according to the FDNY. From 2021 to this week, there have been 27 such deaths. So far this year, there have been 239 battery-related fires and 124 injuries. At the same point in 2022, there had been 191 fires, 140 injuries and six deaths. For all of 2022, there were 220 fires, 147 injuries and six deaths. In 2019, there were 30 fires and 13 injuries.

But nationwide, the deaths aren’t tracked, Lori Moore-Merrell, the head of the U.S. Fire Administration, conceded Wednesday.

In New York, the devices tend to be used by delivery workers who sometimes charge them indoors — sometimes near the doorway to a home, to avoid having to bring a wheeled device deep inside. The batteries can explode and the fire and smoke spread faster than with more traditional sources of ignition, giving occupants about a minute to escape. The fires can rapidly spread from one apartment to others upstairs or nearby.

“This is absolutely a crisis facing New York City,” said FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, speaking at a presentation held on Randall’s Island at the department's training academy.

She urged the buying public to look for products with certified batteries and take precautions to avert the potential for fires.

Robert Kaye, director of the office of compliance and field operations for the Consumer Product Safety Commission said:

“We fully expect that, as we enter the holiday season, these are gonna be products that are gifted throughout the nation. Yet they come with this deadly hazard,” he said.

The commission, which has tried with varying degrees of success to get retailers and online marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, Facebook Marketplace and eBay to keep out uncertified products, said the commission has begun work on mandatory standards for the batteries.

Particularly given phony certifications the FDNY is seeing, Kavanagh said, it can be hard even for experts to identify safe devices.

“I think we’re seeing a lot of bike shops and a lot of citizens who want to do the right thing, and they’re asking me now, ‘how do I know if my bike is safe,’ and, unfortunately, it’s very hard to say how they should know that right now,” Kavanagh said.

The FDNY has done its best to inspect all bike shops, but e-bikes, scooters and certain other illegal mopeds proliferate on city streets, particularly by independent contractors for large delivery e-platforms.

After the FDNY’s event concluded, a driver on an illegal scooter whirred by on the main roadway.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.