E-bike battery sparks blaze; 10 are injured

A raging Manhattan fire that left 10 people hurt and displaced 26 residents was sparked by a lithium-ion battery-powered e-bike stored under the stairs, FDNY officials said Wednesday.

With the stairs set ablaze by the burning battery, residents in the four-story Marble Hill Ave. building near 225th St. needed to scale down the fire escape to escape, FDNY officials said. Firefighters called to the building about 2:15 p.m. on Monday found heavy fire on all floors.

“These old-style buildings with the wooden staircase, you get a decent amount of fire going, a nice fire load, [it] shoots right up,” FDNY Chief Malcolm Moore said at the scene Monday.

Four residents and six firefighters were hurt in the blaze, but all are expected to recover.

Witness Abimael Sequinot saw building residents scrambling down the fire escape in a panic.

“[A lady] slipped off the rungs, and I happened to catch her,” she told CBS News. “A gentleman coming out with his baby, I was happy to go up the rungs with him and carry the baby down because he was barefoot.”

Eokmily Lemp was out working when the fire broke out and was worried about her guinea pig left home alone. Firefighters managed to pull the guinea pig out of the smokefilled apartment, she said.“I was really worried about him,” Lemp told CBS. “Guinea pigs are not known for their survival instincts. I feel much better knowing he’s safe. I’m gonna figure out, I guess, how he’s coming with me wherever we’re going.”

As of Monday evening, cops were still looking for Abigail Grubb’s cat Walter, who hid under the bed as smoke poured into her fourth-floor apartment. Grubb was on a work-related Zoom call when smoke started billowing in.

“I tried to get the cat into the carrier, but he slipped out of my hands and then he ran under the bed and the smoke got really bad, and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t see. So at that point I just had to go out the fire escape and hope that he was somewhere safe,” said Grubb. “My co-workers on the Zoom call saw the firefighters breaking the windows and looking for the cat, and so they came off mute and were like. ‘If you can hear us, Abigail called and the cat’s under the bed!’”

More than 130 firefighters were called in to put out the fire, which was brought under control in about 90 minutes..

“E-bike frame and battery remnants were recovered under the 1st-floor stairwell where the fire originated, trapping residents and forcing others to use the fire escape,” the FDNY tweeted.