Firefighter's iPhone 4 "Spontaneously Caught Fire" While Charging

[LarryC]

I am amazed that this story was even posted on this site. As far as the fire fighter throwing the phone out of the window is concerned, it seems like a pretty good move to me. It was his phone and it was his home, so I'm pretty sure that he was aware of what was and wasn't there. Thank God, it didn't end up with the whole house going up in flames and someone getting killed.

 

[MacTech68]

Well, it IS in the manual that you should never use water on an electrical fire, so to remove the smoldering object from the dwelling may have been the quickest and safest response.

Actually, for a small hand-held device or laptop fire where lithium batteries are involved, water and plenty of it is probably the most effective way to prevent a thermal runaway. Picking up a device that is smoking or on fire that contains lithium batteries is probably the LEAST safest thing you could do. A cell could, at that moment, explode in your hands.

If there is fire, that can be extinguished, but the batteries can still be increasing in temperature and further fires and explosions can occur.

Continuing to douse the device in water effectively cools the batteries, whereas most fire extinguishers will not. Using ice is NOT effective either.

See the FAA tests on extinguishing laptop battery fires:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6KA_Si-m8

especially @ 6:14 where only a halon extinguisher is used.

Original 83MB wmv is here:
http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/2007Conference/files/Training_Videos/ThursPM/Videos/Laptop_master.wmv

Tests comparing Lithium-Ion and Lithium-Polymer are available here:

http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/pdf/09-55.pdf

Interestingly, Lithium-Polymer (the type used in more modern hand helds and laptops) had a lower self-ignition temperature and reached a much higher maximum temperature during the event.

 

[DESNOS]

My question: Was the charger legit, or bootleg? Even non-Apple can be legit, but quite a few iPhone charges are rather questionable...

 

[HellDiverUK]

My question: Was the charger legit, or bootleg? Even non-Apple can be legit, but quite a few iPhone charges are rather questionable...

The way I read it, "Apple provided computer connection" means he plugged the lead in to a computer to charge.

No mention of a charger...

 

[mixel]

Pfft, my Macbook fire was still better. (joking!)

Lets hope for a future where batteries can't do this!

 

[ZipZap]

Is this a new option in "Find my iphone"?

 

[portishead]

I wouldn't put much stock in anything anyone says in Pennsylvania. It's a pretty crappy state.

 

[chrono1081]

Although very unfortunate, electronics catching on fire is not unheard of.

I wish I could find it but I can't, I had a video of a laptop that caught fire at work. All you could really see was smoke and aftermath after it was extinguished not the fire itself since it was put out immediately.

 

[NY Guitarist]

I wouldn't put much stock in anything anyone says in Pennsylvania. It's a pretty crappy state.

Really? I hope this was intended as sarcasm, otherwise it makes you look narrow-minded and irrational.

If not, perhaps you can share how you came to this conclusion?

 

[Rakusan2]

This guy could have been getting too many volts in his electrical outlet at that time the iPhones battery started to melt.

 

[Detlev_73]

Hmmm...this isn't good. Though something tells me that this guy wasn't charging it right.

 

[AndyinAtl]

Electricians like to joke that smoke is factory installed. It is critical to the operation of the electronic device. Once all the smoke is let out...

 

[the8thark]

Here's a couple of Samsung incidents, that were barely spoken about

If you'd linked the article from another site fine. But Gizmodo lets just say after all the stunts they've pulled I think anything on their sites is utter BS. Heck if you think MacRumors is bad Gidmodo is 1000x worse. Those people give the internet a bad name.

 

[Porco]

Well if it is going to happen to anyone lucky it's a Firefighter I guess.

Policeman's iPhone "develops criminally sluggish UI"

Pilot's iPhone "crashes as it hits the ground"

Doctor's iPhone "in need of surgery"...

etc.

 

[roadbloc]

Not trying to say the firefighter is a fool or anything, but shouldn't he be trained to not create a bigger problem by throwing a flaming piece of hardware out the window? Maybe it was raining ...

My phone gets warm sometimes when charging, or if I'm on it for a LONG time with it in my pocket (talking over bluetooth). But after the first time I had it charging on a blanket with a book placed on top of it, when it started roasting I decided that if it got hot enough to catch either the blanket or book on fire, it would be my fault for being so stupid. Same thing happens when the phone is in direct sunlight or if I'm sitting on it. The thing gets really really hot. So considering these things, how dumb do people have to be to insulate their device when it's charging?

I'm pretty sure Apple states very clearly in one of those papers they send packaged with the phone not to cover it, etc when charging. Of course a firefighter would make it sound like the thing was 100% out of control for no reason to keep his reputation of being a "not stupid" firefighter. After he threw it out the window.

I'll bet he was the cool guy down at the station after this happened. But I'm not sold on anything but his stupidity.

Really?

If something is on fire in my house, I'd sooner throw it out of the window and let it burn a bit of my lawn rather than let it burn my house down.

 

[clownie]

iPhone fire

Lipoly batteries are inherently unstable, that is why they have such a good charge density. There are many ways things can get ugly. If the internal resistance goes up in a cell, routine charging amperage starts to heat the cell. If the charger provides a little too much voltage, the the cell heads towards microwave popcorn appearance, then gas vents explosively. I have some monster lipolys from my airplane hobby, and I keep them in a latched metal box. In the hobbyist world, there have been wrecked model planes loaded into the user's car, and a delayed battery fire torching the car. I try to never charge lipoly batteries unattended, or at least try to imagine how the fire (however unlikely) would behave in the charging location... A few fires out a few million devices is about the best one can hope for.

 

[42streetsdown]

Does it make me a blind fanboy or just naive to think that this happens to electronics all the time but this case gets reported because it is Apple?

No it doesn't. This is just a danger of the lithium polymer battery technology.

 

[mrsir2009]

what's the fuss
no one reports anything when their non-apple product catches fire
i've heard of friends' nokia's catching fire back in the day, do they post it on the web?

Because this is an Apple dedicated website.

If this were a Samsung discussion website, don't you think a news post would be made if a Samsung Galaxy S2 caught fire while charging?