Laptop battery explosion sets home on fire

HMN-A laptop battery explosion sets a home on fire.  Wickedlocal.com reports a resident had just gotten up to leave the room when the battery exploded.

BROCKTON – Minutes sooner or inches closer and Rodney Johnson would have been scorched, just like his living room is now. The Brockton resident was relaxing on the couch in his Carl Avenue home at about 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15 with his laptop open on the coffee table in front of him, when the batteries inside the laptop suddenly ignited, exploding like firecrackers in front of him. “It was like fireworks,” Johson said, “They were flying all over the room, it was like bullets. One explosion would end and then it would start again. For minutes, all you could hear: ‘POW, POW, POW.’”

Thankfully, Rodney decided to leave the room at just the right time. He hadn’t yet taken two steps away from the coffee table when the explosions began. “Second earlier and it would have gone off in his face,” Rodney’s wife Carol Johnson said. Johnson’s laptop burst into flames in his living room after he replaced the battery and left it to charge for two hours, Brockton Acting Deputy Fire Captain Richard Costa said. The battery cells burst from their case, setting his couch pillows, blankets and curtains on fire. His wife was able to douse the blaze with a fire extinguisher, and Johnson narrowly avoided serious injury. “God was with me, god is good,” Johnson said.

Costa said the battery was purchased online in September and only cost $11.32. “The problem with these is that they’re not an approved replacement. A lot of the other ones, like in the Samsung Galaxy Note, they’re legit batteries. This was a knock-off,” Costa said. Lithium-ion batteries like the one in the laptop have a history of exploding or catching fire – they’ve caused planes to make emergency landings, and the hover boards that are powered by them are barred from flights.

The Galaxy Note smart phone underwent mass recall after those began detonating, too. Costa said the incident is the first known battery explosion in the city. “They’re lucky they were awake,” he said. “Our three year old granddaughter sometimes watches videos [on the laptop],” Johnson said, “Just imagine, it could have killed her. It almost killed me!”

This article retrieved from HazMatNation.com