Leo Gillick
With all the e-scooters and bikes flying around at the moment, someone has to be there to repair them. But, to do this, licenses and safe working practices have to be in place. When they’re not, situations like the house fire in New York can arise.
Videos by Rare
Lithium-ion isn’t a particularly stable element. Ever since its use in rechargeable batteries, there have been stories of it exploding or catching on fire. Because of this, their repair and maintenance are restricted to registers and monitored companies.
But that won’t stop a few individuals with a little know-how from running underground repair stores on the cheap. Nobody wants to pay over the odds to have their electric scooter or bike repaired when there’s a cheaper black market option available.
But these small repair factories aren’t run in safe places with the correct regulations. It was one of these alleged illegal lithium battery repair shops that caught fire, resulting in a house fire that turned into a police bust.
Battery Bust
When the fire services responded to a house fire on Pidgeon Meadow Road in Queens, New York, they noticed hundreds of lithium-ion batteries burning in the building’s cellar. When police returned to the property, they discovered multiple E-Bikes and scooters in various states of repair.
Hazmat agents recovered around 600 batteries from the house fire location in New York. Speaking about the battery bust, FDNY Chief Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn said, “We actually were able to recover about 700 individual lithium battery cells that we packaged there. So there’s evidence of some type of workshop inside the location. So we believe the homeowner was either building or repairing their own batteries, which is incredibly dangerous.”
However, the man claims that it was just a hobby of his. He just loved taking apart and repairing a house full of e-bikes and scooters. He simply had a passion for lithium-ion batteries and rechargeable power sources.
He will have to see how well his excuse stands up in court when he appears to face charges of illegal storage of e-bikes, along with a summons for multiple fire code violations.
