‘Almost killed me’: The fire risk lurking in almost every home
They power everything from phones to laptops, toothbrushes to cars, e-scooters and bikes. Lithium-ion batteries are all around us. But their convenience comes at a cost, reports Sunday’s Conor Whitten.
“The one I had blew up and almost killed me,” Adam Clayton said.
It’s been two and a half months since an e-scooter caught fire in his Wellington apartment but it’ll be years before he’s recovered.
“It’s a full-time job,” said Clayton. “For the next 20 months to two years.”
“It just exploded. Like a bomb. I got thrown backwards, upside down. It smashed the whole ranch slider.
“Just thinking ’this is it’, you know? If I don’t get up within one second I’m gonna die.
“But little did I know that when the scooter blew up, it actually ended up right across the doorway. And I was just walking straight into a 2000 degree ball of flame, which just stripped all the skin off my legs and my hand.”
