By Paul Homewood
h/t Glen Cullen
This is getting beyond a joke:
An e-bike workshop has been destroyed in an early morning fire in Sydney’s inner west, causing road closures along the suburb’s shopping strip.
Residents were woken just before 5am on Friday after the fire broke out at the building on Elizabeth Street in Croydon.
The building – which houses a business that sells, rents and repairs e-bikes – was destroyed in the blaze, with insurers and structural engineers called in to assess the possibility of collapse.
The cause of the fire had yet to be determined, Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) said.
“Whilst this property was an e-bike-scooter outlet and assembly business, there is no indication that charging batteries caused the fire,” a spokesperson said. “There is an inherent danger to these batteries once they are involved in or exposed to fire.”
Supt Joshua Turner of FRNSW said the warehouse fire and thick smoke immediately increased the alert level for crews responding to the incident.
“When [fire crews] made access, they found it actually was an e-bike repair centre,” he said.
“The risks of lithium batteries and storage units of electricity was their prime concern. We’ll be working with the police as part of our fire investigation and talking with the owners to see what was actually stored within that premises.”
Turner said lithium batteries “maintain a high level of heat when they’re on fire and they don’t go out as easily as other fuel sources”.
One resident, who lives close to the workshop, expressed their concern about the safety of a heritage-listed building storing “hundreds” of e-bikes.
“If one battery causes a garage to burn, what can hundreds of batteries do?” she said.
Recent incidents involving e-bikes include an explosion and fire at a home in Sydney’s east and a fire in a Darlinghurst hostel which caused the evacuation of 70 people and injured one more.
Both fires were sparked by faulty lithium-ion batteries, with concerns raised by the safety regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, regarding the regulation of rechargeable bike batteries.
Fire and Rescue NSW said more than 60 firefighters and 15 fire trucks attended Friday’s incident. Investigations into the cause of the fire were continuing.
Regardless of the actual cause of the fire, this is yet more evidence of just how catastrophic any fire can be if there is a large lithium battery involved.
This was just a bike shop – just imagine the consequences if it had been a garage full of EVs?
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January 9, 2024 at 07:30AM
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