NEW YORK — Firefighters rescued a desperate woman hanging from a window 20 stories above the street as dozens of people were trapped inside a Manhattan high-rise Saturday in a massive blaze that was sparked by an e-bike battery, the New York City Fire Department said.
The smoky blaze reported at about 10:30 a.m. injured 38 people, including five firefighters, said FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh. Two tenants of the building at 429 E. 52nd St. had life-threatening injuries.
Two dozen residents escaped to the roof of the smoke-filled building, between First Avenue and Sutton Place — and ended up stranded there, as firefighters battled the blaze 17 stories below, on the building’s 20th floor.
Firefighters “told us to shelter in place for a while and put wet towels under the door,” Geller said.
As Geller and his parents waited for help, the “smoke kept getting much more thick,” he remembered.
“It was pretty terrifying,” he said. “Then the firefighters came, and we went down the stairs — but they were wet, and my father tripped. So now he’s in the hospital.”
Fire Marshal Flynn said a tenant in the apartment where the fire erupted ran a business repairing e-bikes and scooters. Charging e-bike or micro-mobility device batteries are blamed in nearly 200 apartment fires so far this year, he said.
“We recovered at least five e-bikes from this apartment,” the Flynn said.
Firefighters responded to the building within three minutes, Flynn said — but the fire was already raging, Flynn said.
That is common with lithium-ion battery fires, Flynn said — the batteries quickly erupt into flames.
“When they do go on fire, they are so intense that all combustibles in the area will catch fire,” Flynn said.
“This is not what we have seen traditionally where fires are slow to develop. We are encountering a fully developed fire when firefighters arrive on the scene.”
Fires sparked by lithium-ion batteries are responsible for six deaths so far this year, Flynn said..
There have been twice as many e-bike and e-scooter battery fires so far this year than in all of 2021, the Fire Department says. Last year, 104 fires were sparked by lithium-ion batteries, resulting in 79 injuries and four deaths.
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