GOSHEN – There have been cases in the region of lithium batteries catching fire and while they may be extinguished, they could reignite, warns Vini Tankasali, the Orange County Fire Coordinator.
Last weekend, a nicad battery catch fire in a residential garage in the Vails Gate fire district in Cornwall, igniting a fire in a house.
Tankasali said there was a lithium battery fire in a Tesla on the Palisades Interstate Parkway in Rockland County and other situations in Orange County.
“We have had instances with laptop batteries. We had a recent incident involving a solar-type system, a home system that was purchased off Amazon – small solar panel that you put outside and it stores energy from the sun and puts it into a lithium battery. We had an incident where that unit actually caught fire,” he said.
The bottom line, Tankasali advises, is to keep a watchful eye on those batteries.
