http://www.petaluma360.com/news/5167811-181/hoverboard-started-exploding-in-petaluma
Hoverboard ‘started exploding’ in Petaluma house fire
February 4, 2016 RIC GNECKOWARGUS
[image
http://www.petaluma360.com/csp/mediapool/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?STREAMOID=hj9DY2BY0Fym2HLFhF65qs$daE2N3K4ZzOUsqbU5sYvNfnOaBrIeZxqNvF2cLGKtWCsjLu883Ygn4B49Lvm9bPe2QeMKQdVeZmXF$9l$4uCZ8QDXhaHEp3rvzXRJFdy0KqPHLoMevcTLo3h8xh70Y6N_U_CryOsw6FTOdKL_jpQ-&CONTENTTYPE=image/jpeg
(hoverboard fire damage)
]
After witnessing an eruption of sparks and flaming-hot battery
fragments
ricochet across a corner of his Petaluma home and chasing down the
ensuing
fires burning at multiple points of impact with a fire extinguisher,
Jim
Beels became an unsuspecting character last week in one the most
confounding
consumer product dramas in recent memory — the periodic and seemingly
random
combustion of the hottest holiday toy, the hoverboard.
The incident was one of more than 40 hoverboard-related fires
documented in
the United States and the second within a week in Sonoma County alone,
the
latest episode in the story of a gizmo whose balance-defying
functionality
has largely become a footnote to concerns of overheating and explosion.
A
Petaluma fire official said Beels was lucky to be home at the time,
unlike
the earlier hoverboard fire in Santa Rosa in which a resident came home
to
find his two dogs dead and up to a quarter-million dollars in damage.
Beels himself agreed that he was lucky, recounting the episode from the
scorched epicenter of ejecta in his home near Helen Putnam Regional
Park.
“It was a great toy, until it started exploding,” he said.
Marketed under a number of brands and a wide range of prices,
hoverboards
are something like a handle-less version of a Segway Personal
Transporter.
Beels said he researched the available options before choosing what
firefighting officials would later identify as the Mini Smart
Self-Balancing
2 wheel Electric Scooter with Led Light for his daughter, Lauren, as a
birthday gift in September. Purchased from Amazon before the company’s
own
voluntary recall, the product quickly became a hit with the family.
“Believe me, I like to ride this thing probably more than my daughter,”
he
said.
The device had been charging for around 20 minutes in her room when
Beels,
who was down the hall arranging ski equipment while his 15-year-old son
Josh
played video games nearby, heard a hissing noise he described as the
simultaneous opening of several soda cans.
Shortly after walking down the hall to investigate, Beels said he
witnessed
the shower of sparks ejecting from his daughter’s open door, including
one
large piece of flaming shrapnel that rebounded off the opposite wall to
ignite a stack of clothes below. Sensing the cause was electrical,
Beels
called for his son Josh to flee the house as he ran through the barrage
to
turn off the circuit breaker in the garage.
Re-entering the hallway armed with a fire extinguisher, Beels started
putting out the various small fires that were burning all around the
carpet,
following the flames into his daughter’s bedroom as bits of burning
debris
went whizzing past his head. It was there that he found the hoverboard,
which he doused with foam on his way to the burning bits on the
opposite
side of the room.
Thinking the flames were done, Beels turned around to see the device
reignite, now putting the self-destructing toy between him and the
door.
With another round of spray to the hoverboard and another chase of the
burning pieces it expelled, the fire was finally extinguished.
“The whole house was filled up with gross smoke,” he said.
Petaluma firefighters arrived shortly after, and helped Beels to clear
the
smoke that had filled both floors of his home. Having developed so
quickly,
the fire could well have intensified to the point of the earlier
incident in
Santa Rosa, said Petaluma Fire Department Battalion Chief Mike
Medeiros.
“If this gentleman wasn’t home, we would have had the same incident on
our
hands,” he said.
Beels said investigators, including those from the Consumer Product
Safety
Commission, have described the incident as a rare opportunity to
observe the
initial scope of damage from a hoverboard malfunction.
“At CPSC, our investigators and engineers continue to work diligently
to
find the root cause of the hoverboard fires that have occurred
throughout
the country,” CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye wrote in a statement on the
nationwide investigation.
Absent specific guidance from regulators, Medeiros recommended that
owners
exercise extreme caution while charging the devices in particular.
“The biggest thing with these things is that they’re unknown. We don’t
know
if it’s the expensive ones, the cheap ones, a certain brand,” he said.
“We’re recommending that, if you have one, when you’re charging it,
that you
are present when it’s being charged.”
Beels said his family was done with hoverboards until they’ve been
thoroughly vetted, and hoped his experience would encourage other
owners to
do the same.
“I don’t want anybody near anything I own, or anybody I love, with a
hoverboard,” he said.
[© petaluma360.com]
http://www.erietvnews.com/story/31144511/mckean-man-warns-of-hoverboards-after-one-explodes-inside-suv
Hoverboard Catches Fire, Explodes Inside SUV
Feb 04, 2016 Mackenzie Stasko
Ted Tecza has a warning for anyone who owns a hoverboard or who is
considering buying one.
"I was shocked, utterly shocked that this could happen with one of
those
units [hoverboards] sitting there, doing nothing," he said.
Tecza bought a hoverboard online as a gift for grandson, but after
hearing
about how dangerous they can be, he tried returning it. After he was
told it
was too late, Tecza decided to keep it. On Tuesday, he placed the
brand-new
electric scooter in the back of his SUV. But when he went to leave
Wednesday
morning, the normally clear windows on his 2012 Ford Explorer were
tinted
black and the smell of fire in the air.
"The gas tank is right underneath there," Tecza said, pointing to where
he
placed the hoverboard the night before. "My wife said, maybe it's that
hoverboard you have in the back of the car, so I went back here and
sure
enough it was that."
When the hoverboard exploded, the SUV was parked in the garage, and
Tecza's
wife Judy was sleeping in the loft upstairs. "We're very fortunate the
car
was locked tight and therefore it burned itself out because it didn't
have
any oxygen," he said, aware of how much worse the situation could have
ended.
It's no secret hoverboards can be dangerous; there have been countless
cases
of them exploding across the country. Some airlines, retailers and
universities have even banned them. Experts say it's the lithium
batteries
used to power the hoverboard that cause them to explode.
Tecza's warning for others, think twice before you buy one. "I just
want
people to be aware of what could happen with these units," he said.
[© 2016 Frankly Media and WICU]
[dated]
http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/Only-You-Can-Prevent-Hoverboard-fires-tp4679021.html
Only You Can Prevent Hoverboard fires
Dec 04, 2015
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