By Colin Mixson, Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A firefighter was injured early Tuesday when a lithium-ion battery sparked a massive fire in a Midtown Manhattan e-bike rental store, the FDNY said.
The blaze erupted inside the BinGit.NYC rental store on W. 38th St. near Sixth Ave. at about 3 a.m. The shop rents out e-bikes, scooters and pedal bikes and also stores e-bikes and scooters for delivery workers in Midtown.
FDNY officials determined that a lithium-ion battery — the kind used to power e-bikes and e-scooters — was the cause of the fire. However, whether the battery was being charged at the time is still under investigation, a spokesperson said.
“Thankfully, nobody was seriously injured, but these lithium-ion batteries being stored in buildings like this are ticking time bombs, and people can get really badly hurt or killed,” Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker said at a press conference outside the BinGit.NYC store.
Responding firefighters had to cut through the store’s roll-down security gates and force open a back door to get into the smoke-filled store. The place’s sprinkler system had already been activated.
“[We] were met by heavy fire,” FDNY Chief Brian Gorman said. “After the first-floor blaze was extinguished, water seeped downstairs and caused batteries stored in cellar to explode, igniting a second fire.”
A hazmat team was immediately dispatched after more than 100 heated and damaged lithium-ion batteries were found inside the business.
“There were hundreds of batteries stored in here,” Tucker said. “This was a very significant charging and storage location and extremely dangerous to the public and FDNY first responders.”
The FDNY had repeatedly inspected the store and issued violations regarding e-bike battery storage and other issues, but the owners would just pay their fines and continue operating, FDNY Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn said.
“We’ve written them violations, we’ve written them summonses and they’ve persisted to engage in these unsafe practices,” Flynn explained. “As you can see behind us, what they’ve done here has endangered everyone, not just the public but our firefighters as well.”
The last time the FDNY visited the store and issued summonses was in September, Flynn added.
More than 80 firefighters and EMS personnel arrived at the scene, FDNY officials said. The fire was extinguished by 4:30 a.m.
The fire began in the basement, where many of the delivery workers’ bikes are stored. The sprinklers activating on the first floor most likely saved the fire from spreading to the building’s upper floors, an FDNY source said.
Firefighters spent the rest of the morning taking apart the battery packs and removing the individual lithium-ion cells, which look like shotgun shells, and placing them into barrels filled with fire-suppressant chemicals. Lithium-ion cells can reignite even after they have been doused, FDNY officials said.
The cells in at least one of the barrels caught fire as firefighters were placing the cells inside of it, a video obtained by the Daily News shows.
One firefighter suffered a minor injury fighting the blaze and was taken to Lenox Health Greenwich Village for further care.
An email to BinGit.NYC requesting comment was not immediately returned.
Opened battery packs and bike accessories were seen heaped in a pile outside the store as delivery workers arrived to see if their bikes survived the blaze.
“We have [our] stuff over there — everything, bikes,” said one delivery worker, who wished not to be named. The deliveryman stores his bike in the shop, but takes his battery home and charges it there.
“If I leave [my bike] outside [my home], it will be stolen,” he said. “We pay to store our bikes here. It’s not free.”
By Tuesday afternoon, no one had been able to tell the delivery workers which bikes had survived and which had not, he said.
“We haven’t been inside,” he said. “I’m worried. My bike’s expensive.”
Manuele Sacca , a sandwich maker at Pissilo Italian Panini across the street, wondered if the bike shop workers were checking to see if the lithium-ion batteries they were storing were UL-certified. Off-market brands that aren’t certified by Underwriters Laboratories or a similar testing company are more likely to explode, fire officials said.
“They’re dangerous, especially if you keep the batteries on charge all night,” Sacca, 25, said. “Most batteries are unregulated. If you’re going to keep a store like this, they have to be regulated.”
In October, a 34-year-old Bronx man was killed when a charging lithium-ion moped battery set his kitchen on fire, officials said.
In 2019, when FDNY first started tracking these fires, only 13 blazes were attributed to the batteries. By 2020, the number had more than tripled to 44, FDNY officials said.
As the number of lithium-ion batteries increased, the FDNY began a massive public service announcement campaign to encourage e-bike and e-scooter owners to use only factory-installed batteries, not charge them overnight, and keep the bikes outside if possible. The department also ramped up inspections at e-bike stores and improved its response tactics.
As a result, fire deaths caused by lithium-ion batteries have dropped from 18 this time last year to five this year, officials said.
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