A Forest Hills e-scooter store was found to be selling and manufacturing illegal lithium-ion batteries.
Photo courtesy of the FDNY
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh was in Forest Hills Thursday morning to announce that an e-scooter shop on Queens Boulevard had been temporarily shut down after being found to be not just selling illegal lithium-ion batteries but manufacturing them as well in a storefront directly above a subway station.
A task force including FDNY Fire Marshals, Fire Prevention Inspectors and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) inspected Wilson’s Electric Scooter Sale & Repair at 109-19 Queens Blvd. on Tuesday and recovered sixty battery packs, hundreds of individual lithium-ion cells, and components used to alter, create, and repair battery packs from individual lithium-ion battery cells.
“We call them Frankensteins,” Kavanagh said in front of the shuttered storefront. “They hold a tremendous amount of power effectively packed into a tiny space, once you damage them, they explode.”
An FDNY Hazmat unit responded to the scene Tuesday and packed five metal drums to safely remove the uncertified batteries after some began to fail and ignite and had to be extinguished.
“So anyone who is doing this kind of work that is one not trained to do it, or two doing it in a residence or business like this that is not meant or built to handle what is effectively an industrial operation, there’s a reason that other sorts of businesses that do industrial work are not on the bottom floor of someone’s home or not in an apartment,” Kavanagh said.
The business was issued violations by the FDNY, DWCP, as well as the Department of Buildings and the Department of Environmental Protection. Two dozen e-scooters and 25 gas-powered mopeds were also seized.
“Tuesday’s inspections saved lives and property,” Chief Fire Marshall Daniel Flynn said. “The work between agencies on this inspection is critical to public safety….
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply