NEW YORK — A raging 5-alarm fire ripped through a Bronx supermarket over the weekend, and investigators say the blaze was caused by a lithium-ion battery.
The fire broke out around 10:40 a.m. on Sunday and prompted the intervention of around 200 firefighters from the supermarket. Food Plaza Contest. Huge columns of thick smoke filled the sky, visible for miles away.
Major Eric Adams and senior officers of the fire department, (FDNY, for its acronym in English), said that the origin of the fire was a scooter with battery. Video captured the moment the vehicle caught fire inside the store.
“El video es escalofriante. Cuando viste lo rápido que commenzó y se propagó este incendio, really te da un punto de pause”, dijo Adams in a conference of prensa, minetras los teams continuaban extinguiendo los puntos criticos unas cinco horas después de que comenzara hell.
The scooter and battery that authorities point to as the culprits in the incident that completely destroyed the store were shown to the public during the briefing.
“This charred scooter is just a symbol of what is happening behind it and what has continued to happen since early this morning. We are still fighting a fire because of the type of device from which the fire started. started,” Adams said.
In total, according to the authorities, seven people were injured. Five of them were firefighters responding to the blaze, along with an EMS member and a Con Edison worker, FDNY officials said. Everyone was expected to be fine.
The charred remains of electric scooters they will be inspected as part of the fire department’s investigation to see what exactly caused the explosion of the battery powering the device.
Battery fires continue to be a challenge for municipal authorities. By the end of February, lithium-ion batteries used to power electric bicycles and scooters had started 25 fires that left 36 injured and two dead in the city.
Yolanda Vásquez with the details.
Many battery-blamed fires have been caused by malfunctioning devices that were left to charge overnight and placed in a hallway or near a doorway where they could trap people inside a burning apartment.
In 2022, lithium-ion batteries were the cause of 216 fires.