E-bike battery sparks NYC apartment building fire that killed one, injured six
A 39-year-old man was killed and six other people were injured when a fire sparked by an e-bike battery ripped through a NYCHA apartment building in the Bronx, authorities said.
Hiriam Borrero-Echevarria died in the blaze that erupted around 7 p.m. Sunday in his apartment on the 10th floor of the 14-story building within NYCHA’s Bronx River Houses, between East 174th Street and the Cross Bronx Expressway.
An e-bike was found at the scene of the fire — and the flames were sparked by a lithium-ion battery, a highly explosive device that is used to power the devices, the FDNY confirmed Monday.
Of those hurt in the inferno, two suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, the department said.
Twenty FDNY units, including 78 firefighters, responded to the blaze, officials said.
Borrero-Echevarria marks the 18th person to die so far this year in 253 citywide fires sparked by the dangerous devices that FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh previously called “ticking time bombs.”
A total of 133 injuries have been reported so far this year in such fires, the FDNY said.
That’s a significant increase from this time last year, when six people had died in 207 fires sparked by the charging devices.
However, the injury count was higher last year, with 145 people reported hurt, the department said.
An exploding lithium-ion battery, used to power an electric scooter, was to blame for another deadly fire that claimed the lives of three family members in Brooklyn earlier this month, the FDNY said.
Family matriarch Albertha West, 81, her son Michael West, 58, and grandson Jamiyl West, 33, died in the fire on Albany Avenue in Crown Heights, officials said.
At least 14 other people were also injured in the conflagration — including one firefighter who suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, the department said at the time.
“The volume of fire we see from these batteries creates untenable conditions both for residents to get out, but also for [FDNY] members to get in,” Kavanagh said at a news conference announcing the cause of that inferno.
