Cheshire Fire Dept. Warns E-Scooter Owners Of Toxic Smoke Danger

Take this as a general warning for what it's worth. The Cheshire Fire Department posted a warning today on its Facebook page for owners of E-Scooters and E-Bicycles. They are basically passing a warning along from a Canadien-based Facebook page and website run by a group of firefighters. The warning comes from "Train Your Probie" which describes itself as

...a group of like-minded firefighters who have a passion for firefighting and a goal of leaving the job better than we found it.

So the warning is this... if you are the owner of an E-Scooter or an E-Bicycle, you need to keep a close eye on it when you are charging it. That is generally when trouble with these devices occurs.

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The warning doesn't seem to be aimed at city-maintained E-scooters, like the ones that the City of Pittsfield now uses around town. Those are charged by staff and then returned to the field for use.

The Cheshire Fire Department posted this:

This is the danger with the new electric bike and electric scooters. The batteries are malfunctioning causing massive building fires when they are parked inside. The smoke from these fires is poisonous and very toxic. Please be careful if you own one of these bikes or scooters during charging.

Here is the post that the Cheshire Fore Dept. re-posted from the "Train Your Probie" page (https://www.facebook.com/trainyourprobie)

As you can see from this video when the batteries of these devices overheat they can burst into flames. Now, they are specifically pointing to what they refer to as "knock-off" batteries. Train Your Probie says that the smoke is extremely toxic so make sure to "go on air" immediately if you are involved with incidents with these batteries. I'm assuming that when they say to "go on air" they are referring to using oxygen.

In any case, a little caution when using a device that requires charging is always a good idea anyway, so take it for what it's worth.

See the Cheshire Facebook page, HERE.