Yahoo News by Wyatte Grantham-Philips, USA TODAY 4/11/2023
A fire caused by an e-bike's lithium-ion battery killed two children in New York on Monday, officials with the New York City Fire Department said.
The fire started in the first floor entrance of a multi-family building in Queens, and then quickly traveled "directly up the stairs" to a second floor apartment, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens told reporters at the scene.
A father and several children were in the upstairs apartment at the time of the fire, Hodgens said. The father and three of the children were able to jump out of the window to escape the fire – but two children died in the 2-alarm fire.
"It's a terrible tragedy," Hodgens said, adding firefighters arrived to the scene in about three minutes. "We got here very quickly – and if this was not an e-bike fire, most likely we would've been able to put this fire out without incident. But the way these fires occur, it’s like an explosion of fire."
Due to the fast-moving nature of e-bike fires and the fact the bike was being charged near the building's front entrance, the occupants "had very little chance of escaping," he said.
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