Electric bike fire kills 4 people in the US

The remains of electric bicycles in the fire

AFP reported on June 21 that four people died after an electric bicycle's lithium battery caused a fire in a building in New York City (New York state, USA), the latest warning after a spike in similar incidents.

The fire broke out overnight at an electric bicycle and electric motorbike maintenance facility on the ground floor of a building in Chinatown.

Images posted on Twitter by the New York Fire Department showed several charred motorcycles outside the burned facility. At a press conference at the scene, Laura Kavanaugh of the New York Fire Department said four people were killed and two others were seriously injured in the incident on the evening of June 19 (local time).

“It was clearly caused by the lithium-ion batteries and the electric bikes,” she said, adding that the store had previously been fined for safety violations.

This is the 108th fire in New York City this year from a similar cause, killing a total of 13 people and injuring 66. In April, a 19-year-old girl and her 7-year-old brother died in a similar fire in Queens.

Fires involving electric bicycles and electric scooters in New York have surged in recent years, from 44 in 2020 to 220 last year, as more people buy electric bikes, especially for the city's popular food delivery service.

Batteries are more likely to catch fire if they are of poor quality, too old, or shared with other batteries. When they explode, they create so much fire that it is often too late once a fire breaks out, Kavanaugh said.

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