NEW YORK—A fire at a New York City e-bike shop quickly spread to upper-floor apartments and killed four people early Tuesday in the latest deadly blaze linked to exploding lithium ion batteries.
The fire, reported shortly after midnight, happened at a shop that was cited last summer for safety violations related to the storage and charging of batteries, officials said.
A pile of burned bikes, scooters, and other debris lay on the sidewalk outside the shop, HQ E-Bike Repair, which was on the ground floor of a six-story building in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood.
So far this year, there have been more than 100 fires and 13 deaths linked to battery explosions in the city, said Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh….