Gorham Fire Department Warns People After Charging Laptop Destroys House

The Gorham Fire Department had a very busy weekend.

The Gorham Fire Department put out several fires Sunday, April 3. But one of those fires was caused by a charging laptop left on a bed. That made the Gorham Public Safety Crews put out a Facebook post reminding people that things that are powered by lithium batteries CAN catch on fire!

There were no reports of injuries, but this is crazy and they issued a warning about just what around your house might have lithium batteries that can and have caused fires.

The Gorham Fire Department warned that lithium batteries are in some smartphones, laptops, scooters, e-cigarettes, smoke alarms (wait, what?), and some toys. Now, it's not an everyday occurrence that these batteries cause fires, but you should be careful in handling them. They have been known to cause a fire or explosion in rare cases.

The National Fire Protection Association has some recommendations to avoid being one of those 'rare' cases. Do NOT charge something with a lithium battery, like your phone or laptop, under your pillow, on your bed, or on a couch. They also recommend avoiding excessive charging. If you constantly charge something it can cut the battery’s life and might even cause it to stop working!

The first thing I thought was, 'Well, how do I know if I have a lithium battery in my laptop?' A quick Google search answered that question:

One of the easiest ways to determine what kind of battery you have is to turn off and unplug your laptop and then remove the battery to look at it. Most batteries will have a set of printed information on them, including the battery type, its model number, a part number, its voltage, and charging current.

To be honest, I'm just going to treat everything I own that runs on a rechargeable battery like it's lithium!