by 
A 7-year-old boy and his 19-year-old sister were killed in a fire caused by an electric bicycle’s lithium-ion battery in Queens on Monday, April 10, according to New York City Fire Department (FDNY extension).
THE FDNY extension he said the fire started where an e-bike was parked in the first-floor vestibule of a residence on 46th Street in Astoria. The fire quickly spread up the stairs where a father and his five children were staying, they said.
Four of the occupants survived by jumping out of windows, but two were killed in the fire, John Hodgens said. FDNY extension Department Chief.
“The way these fires happen, it’s like a fire explosion,” Hodgens said. “The occupants have very little chance of escape.”
Hodgens urged people to be careful with e-bikes and “never store them in your exit or exit path.”
Fire Chief Marshal Dan Flynn said it was the 59th fire caused by lithium-ion batteries that the FDNY extension he had been answering since the beginning of the year.
“We want people to use them, but we want people to use them safely,” Flynn said. “We want people to buy chargers that are compatible with the devices they buy. Don’t buy the cheapest option. We lost two people today; we were lucky not to lose six.” Credit: FDNY extension via Storyful
Video transcription
– It was a fire that broke out on the first floor of the building behind me in the vestibule. The cause of the fire was an e-bike. It created a severe fire condition on the first floor level, which was able to travel directly up the stairs. There were six occupants upstairs, a father and six children. Four of them managed to jump out of the windows and two, sadly, died. As I said, it is a terrible tragedy.
We were here in about three minutes. So we got here really fast. And if this hadn’t been an electric bicycle fire, we most likely would have been able to put out this fire without incident. But the way these fires happen, it’s like a fire explosion, and these occupants had little chance to escape.
We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years now and how dangerous it is to have these devices, especially if you keep them at home, to store them anywhere near your exit. So this was right at the front door of the house, and the occupants had no option to exit the building. It’s an ongoing issue.
We implore everyone to be very careful and aware of the danger of these devices, not to charge them overnight or unattended, to use the equipment, charger and extension cord provided with the bike, and never to store them when outing, or your exit route. We have had a lot of fires so far this year which we can attribute to that. I’ll pass it on to my fire chief, who will look into it further.
– Well, today’s fire marks our 59th fire this year where the cause of the fire was the lithium-ion battery that powers a micro-mobility device. This… today, unfortunately, we had our fifth fatality so far this year with 59 fires, as I said. We want people to buy chargers that are compatible with the devices they buy. Don’t buy the cheapest option. Make sure what you buy is compatible with your device. We lost two people today. We were lucky not to lose six of them.
