The growing wave of fires produced by lithium-ion batteries is increasingly out of control in the city.
So far this year, there are already five deaths related to one of these batteries and there have been 59 fires.
But what exactly is causing so many fires?
“No battery explodes unless you put the charger other than the one that that battery is on,” said Victor De Leon, owner of Victor’s Bike Repair.
De León, a bicycle expert, electric bicycles and their lithium-ion batteries are not inherently unsafe, but the way they are typically used and charged does present serious risks.
“We have here a professional charger that has two lights, when the battery is charging it turns red, and it is automatically fully charged. Now in green, no more current passes to the battery,” added De León. “These other chargers do not have this system, that is the problem and that is where the explosion occurs.”
Batteries are made up of dozens of cells, almost the size of a double AA battery and are very close together, if they come into contact they cause a short circuit.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten… you are talking about 30 batteries, when one explodes, they explode in series, pam pam pam, they hit in series,” he said Of Lion.
All the energy stored in the battery is quickly released, sometimes causing fires and then injuries and sometimes deaths.
“And you can hear the noise of the fan that is cooling the charger so that there is no explosion, instead this is a charger with a poor quality fan,” De León said.
De León insists that you do not repair anything yourself, since depending on when these begin to fail, people often disassemble them without knowing about it.
“We started to open these batteries without knowing the system, sometimes the ‘switcher’ is damaged and they want to open it to change it, without knowing about electricity and the wires get stuck and the explosion occurs.”
Batteries usually wear out after a year and a half and you should keep in mind that throwing them away or recycling them is illegal, according to the Fire Department. You can take it to a recycling place or visit the website nyc.gov/batteries
