FDNY: Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Kills First Victim in 2025
New York Daily News
(TNS)
A fire sparked by an e-bike battery killed a grandmother trapped by the blaze in the bathroom of a Queens pizzeria, officials said Tuesday.
Sunnyside resident Yuet Kiu Cheung,76, was doing some holiday shopping in Flushing Friday with a friend when they decided to stop at Singas Famous Pizza on Kissenna Blvd., her son Tommy Ou Yang said. She wouldn’t make it out alive, becoming the first person to die from a lithium-ion battery fire in the city this year.
“For me to find my mom burnt like a roast pig, almost 100 percent of her whole body, is a memory I cannot forget,” the victim’s son told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. “She’s a very loving parent, a loving grandmother. All her grandchildren, they all miss her.”
An e-bike used for deliveries that had been left next to the bathroom burst into flames about 3:30 p.m., trapping Cheung inside.
“My mom always mentioned that pizzeria is pretty decent,” Yang said before recalling what her friend told him. “She wanted to use the restroom before she left. She went inside the bathroom. After about maybe a minute there were three explosions and then there was some type of weird smell that she does not know how to describe. But it was a weird smell and all of a sudden the black smoke comes out.”
The rapidly spreading flames were typical of a lithium-ion battery fire.
“These things take off very, very quickly,” FDNY Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn said at a Tuesday press conference outside the now-shuttered pizzeria. “The woman was in the bathroom and was trapped and couldn’t get out.”
Cheung finally exited the bathroom and ran through the flames in a desperate attempt to escape but was overcome by the smoke and collapsed before reaching the exit, Flynn said.
“These fires are very treacherous. They move very quickly and they are very hot,” FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker said. “You can’t go far before you’re overtaken.”
Five other workers and customers in the pizzeria managed to escape unscathed.
Responding firefighters pulled the woman from the burning eatery and medics rushed her to New York-Presbyterian Queens, where she died the next day, Tucker said.
“The neighborhood, everybody loves her,” her devastated son said. “She’s always very friendly with everybody, tries to help everyone.”
Yang said there is no excuse for using the batteries inside.
“These shouldn’t be inside indoor areas,” Yang said.
Tucker agreed.
“These devices can be extremely dangerous,” Tucker said. “We have been working so hard to put out the message that e-mobility devices do not belong inside. You can’t charge them inside and must buy a certified UL ( Underwriters Laboratories) battery.”
More than 106 firefighters and emergency medical technicians responded to the blaze. The fire was brought under control in under an hour.
Last year, six people died in lithium-ion battery fires citywide, FDNY officials said. In 2023, 18 people died from e-bike or e-scooter fires.
So far this year the FDNY has fought 122 lithium-ion battery fires but this was the first one to go fatal, officials said. The steep drop in fatalities shows that city residents have taken the FDNY’s warnings to heart — but “one death is too many,” Tucker said.
“I will not stop talking about lithium-ion battery safety until the number is zero,” Tucker added.
In April, the FDNY put out a public service announcement titled “Take It Outside” to encourage New Yorkers to charge their lithium-ion devices away from their homes to protect people and property.
In 2019, when the FDNY first started separately tracking these fires, only 13 blazes were attributed to the batteries. By 2020, the number had more than tripled to 44.
FDNY investigators and battery experts say the exploding electrical devices are usually not certified by Underwriters Laboratories or another safety inspection company but bought cheap online or in area scooter stores instead to supplement or replace batteries included with scooters or e-bikes as original equipment.
Many delivery workers buy a supply of knockoff backup batteries so their e-bikes and scooters can stay continuously charged.
As the number of lithium-ion battery fires increased, the FDNY began a massive public service announcement campaign to encourage e-bike and e-scooter owners to use only factory-installed batteries, not charge them overnight, and keep the bikes outside if possible.
The department also pushed city lawmakers to make the sale of uncertified lithium-ion batteries illegal and ramped up inspections at e-bike stores and improved its response tactics.
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