FDNY officials said Monday the cause of a three-alarm fire in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that killed three family members across three generations Sunday was a lithium-ion battery.
“This was a difficult and dangerous fire that drew a massive response from our members and seriously injured one of our firefighters,” FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said at the scene of the fire Monday afternoon. “Our fire marshals have completed their investigation, and they’ve determined the cause of this fire is a lithium-ion battery.”
Kavanagh said 17 people have now died this year because of fires caused by the batteries, which power popular electric vehicles, including e-scooters and -bikes. She called that number “staggering and devastating” and said the city was on track to have more than 100 fire deaths in 2023, “an extraordinary number not seen in decades.”
“There is blood on the hands of private industry, both from the online retailers who continue to sell these illegal devices to this day and from the food delivery apps that think this problem will solve itself,” Kavanagh added. “These illegal, uncertified devices are ticking timebombs.”
Albertha West, 81, her son Michael West, 58, and her grandson Jamiyl West, 33, all died at Kings County Hospital after the early Sunday fire in Crown Heights engulfed their brownstone on Albany Avenue near Sterling Place, police said.
According to the FDNY, the fire broke out on the ground floor of the building, but it was too early in the investigation to tell whether the battery in question was charging when the fire started and whether it was uncertified. “It’s extensively damaged,” Kavanagh noted, adding that the battery was for a “scooter of some kind.”
Chief Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn said investigators were told the scooter belonged to one of the deceased occupants but he did not specify whom, citing the ongoing inquiry. He said firefighters recovered two scooters from the area where the fire broke…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply