An EE power bar caught fire and burned a student

Recently, EE has been running a promotion in which it has been handing out free portable chargers/power bars to eligible customers. Unfortunately, one caught fire this week and ended up  giving a student some pretty bad burns. The incident happened when the EE power bar was charging up overnight.

The student’s name is Katy Emsile, who described the incident to The BBC: “There was soot all over the carpet. At that point I was like ‘Oh my god something has exploded’ so I got out of my bed. The yellow wire was still on my desk, but I looked down and there were flames underneath my bed, so I grabbed my bed and lifted it up.”

“I panicked because there was actual flames as opposed to embers. I was terrified because I thought it was going to either burn through the floor or catch fire onto the bed. My hands smelt of firework, my clothes smelt of firework, my hair smelt of firework. My pillow has black soot on it, so it obviously went past my pillow and missed my head by about six inches.”

According to EE, this is a one-off incident so there won’t be a recall of power bars due to any sort of manufacturing fault.

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KitGuru Says: Battery issues in smart devices aren’t too uncommon. Similar incidents have happened in the past, though this doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue. 

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