Global Courant
NEW YORK — A fire at a New York City e-bike shop quickly spread to top-floor apartments and killed four people early Tuesday in the latest deadly blaze linked to exploding lithium-ion batteries.
The fire, reported shortly after midnight, occurred at a store that was sued last summer for safety violations related to battery storage and charging, officials said.
A pile of burnt bicycles, scooters and other debris lay on the sidewalk outside the store, HQ E-Bike Repair, on the ground floor of a six-story building in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood.
So far this year there have been more than 100 fires and 13 deaths from battery explosions in the city, said Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh.
“There was a very large number of batteries and e-bikes,” Kavanagh said at a morning press conference. “This location is known to the fire service. We have already committed written violations at this location and we have already taken enforcement action at this location.”
Tuesday’s fire killed two men and two women. Two other women were hospitalized in critical condition, officials said. One firefighter suffered minor injuries.
Kavanagh said it was “very clear” that the fire was caused by lithium-ion batteries, which can overheat during charging and explode in an intensely hot flame, but that the exact cause is still under investigation.
Chief Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn said the store was inspected last August and later cited for safety violations related to battery charging, the number of batteries at the site and the electrical system. The store was fined $1,600. Authorities recently investigated the store and found that there were many batteries, but none of them were being charged at the time, he said.
A man who said he owned the bike shop told The Associated Press that he did his usual checks of the shop before leaving Monday night. He denied that e-bike batteries were being charged.
“The store has been there for six years. I check every night before I leave,” said the man, who spoke in Mandarin in a phone interview and mentioned only his last name, Liu. ”
He added: “I got a call from a neighbor … telling me about the fire. I went to my shop but couldn’t get close as they were dealing with the fire. I saw a lot of smoke. My shop is gone. I’ve been working for nothing for years.”
Liu said he waited at the police station on Tuesday morning to talk to officers.
The fire shook the neighborhood in the middle of the night.
“A friend of mine came in and yelled ‘there’s a fire next door,'” local resident Belal Alayah told WABC-TV. “I get out. I see the flames so hot they go through the metal gate. I knew it was the bike shop, so I called the fire department. But the fire kept getting bigger and bigger and it took them a while to stop the fire.”
Electric bikes have become popular non-gasoline-powered ways to deliver, commute, and tour in a city that has promoted cycling in recent decades. Many run on lithium-ion batteries, which have been blamed for countless fires.
In April in the Queens section of New York City, two children were killed in a fire that was blamed on an e-bike. Another fire in Manhattan in November that injured more than three dozen people was caused by a faulty e-bike battery, officials said.
Last year in the city, nearly 200 fires and six deaths were attributable to such batteries, with an 8-year-old girl and a 5-year-old girl among those who died in fires related to scooter batteries. Firefighters have repeatedly issued warnings and safety tips, and the city passed new regulations this year to prevent battery fires.
“So today we really want to emphasize something that we’ve said over and over… it’s also very, very important to get the word out about how incredibly dangerous this is,” Kavanagh said. “This exact scenario with an e-bike store on the first floor and residences above and the volume of fire generated by these lithium-ion batteries is incredibly lethal.”
Lithium-ion batteries can catch fire because they contain a flammable electrolyte solution that allows electric current to flow, experts say. Many fires have been associated with such batteries in laptops, cell phones and other items.
