If you have been following the news, and wondering could a vape fire kill you, your answer has to be, it depends. This is because a vape burning in the garden should do little more than emit toxic fumes. Whereas the same lithium-ion battery inside a house, could start a fire and trap the people inside.
You’re Kidding! Could a Vape Fire Burn Down a House?
Birmingham Mail in England tells the tragic tale of a young couple in their mid-twenties, and their two dogs. They all died after a battery in their modified bicycle caught alight, and burned down their house. Perhaps they did not know how quickly an extremely hot lithium-ion battery fire can spread.
Lithium-ion batteries are common in vapes, e-scooters, phones, and laptops. But we find the greatest volume of these batteries in vapes, on account of high consumer demand. Quality lithium-ion batteries seldom give problems. However, this is not the case if they are substandard, damaged, defective, or charged incorrectly.
There has been a sharp increase in lithium-ion battery fires, and the trend is continuing. Many of these batteries are purchased on the internet, where there are almost no advertising standards or quality controls. This is where the vast majority of faulty lithium-ion batteries appear to come from.
Putting the pieces together from what we know, we have reason to believe that the young couple installed a faulty battery in their converted e-bike, or somehow charged it incorrectly. That battery would have been quite powerful, and could have caused the fire that killed them, as they could not escape.
Closing the Loop and Wrapping Up
We introduced this article with the question, could a vape fire kill you? Well a vape fire is certainly possible, especially if you purchased the device and / or the vape battery from a stranger on the internet.
That fire could certainly spread and cause damage too, as we illustrate in the picture at the top of this article. If there was someone in that attic at the time of that fire, and they could not escape, then yes, the toxic fumes from the vape fire might have killed them.
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