Another e-bike battery has caught alight in Sydney’s west - forcing residents to evacuate from an apartment building this morning.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Well around 6am an electric bike that was being charged inside the apartment building
00:06 behind me caught fire.
00:09 Fire and Rescue say the building's sprinkler system helped to extinguish the flames before
00:13 crews arrived and made the building safe.
00:16 One man sustained burns to his hand but thankfully there were no other reported injuries.
00:22 Fire and Rescue say the e-bike had modifications made to it and its battery that likely contributed
00:28 to it catching fire.
00:29 Around 50 residents had to be evacuated from the building as a result as smoke billowed
00:35 from the apartment.
00:36 They were left out on the street here for a couple of hours this morning.
00:40 Let's have a listen to some of what they had to say about what happened.
00:44 Next door pretty much it was like full on smoke like we wake up we thought it's another
00:50 false alarm but it's a...
00:51 We went to the balcony people were screaming fire truck had arrived opened the corridor
00:56 door was filled with smoke and then we came down the fire emergency.
01:00 All I heard was people screaming and then I woke up to the screaming and then all I
01:06 heard was the alarm go off and then yeah smoke smoke and then ran down.
01:12 Suddenly the alarm started and we got you know we suddenly wake up and just step down
01:18 that's it and we saw smoke in the third floor I live in the fourth floor and it started
01:24 behind in the below stairs so.
01:26 Helena why are e-bike and e-scooter fires so dangerous?
01:33 Well Dan we've really seen a spate of electric scooter and electric bike fires across Australia
01:39 over the past couple of years as they've become more and more popular.
01:43 The lithium ion batteries inside e-bikes and e-scooters have a tendency to overheat and
01:48 malfunction causing them to combust.
01:51 Once they do catch fire they burn very very hot and often harder to extinguish than other
01:57 traditional fires.
01:59 What happened here today looks to be yet another case of an e-bike battery exploding and catching
02:05 fire.
02:06 Let's have a listen to what Fire and Rescue had to say about what they believe occurred
02:10 here.
02:11 It looks like the battery on the e-bike had failed and gone into what we call thermal
02:16 runway.
02:17 These are some of the projectiles that came out of the battery so they were all through
02:20 the unit, they're quite explosive.
02:22 They had fired off to all different directions of the unit.
02:26 As a result of the sprinkler system going off we've had significant water damage to
02:30 level three and as I said earlier one gentleman was very very lucky to get out with some minor
02:35 burns.
02:38 As always fire crews are urging anyone who owns an e-bike or an e-scooter to never charge
02:45 them inside their homes.
02:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]