It’s a file. Already in 2026, New York Metropolis has suffered 406 lithium-ion battery fires, sparked by the electrical cells that energy an ever-growing fleet of e-bikes and electrical scooters.
Since 2019, when the Hearth Division first began maintaining these stats, such blazes have resulted in 46 deaths and 628 accidents.
All this occurred regardless of an aggressive effort to finish this grim however persistent pattern. Legal guidelines have been handed. Insurance policies modified. The FDNY warned individuals time and again to not cost off-label batteries with out security certification.
And but final month, 4 tenants of a Bronx public housing improvement perished in a fast-moving hearth triggered by a battery charging inside their condominium.
Then final week, six individuals died in a Sundown Park blaze. A trigger has not been formally launched, however FDNY officers famous two charred lithium-ion battery-powered units have been faraway from the scene. Not counting the victims of the latest Brooklyn hearth, that’s 9 battery-fire deaths already this 12 months.
And as soon as once more, elected officers are calling for reforms.
Final week, the Metropolis Council introduced it’s going to maintain an emergency listening to on this subject on Nov. 20. And on Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani instructed reporters his administration is specializing in discovering an answer, “whether or not it’s exploring further laws or it’s exploring further coverage that we are able to make on the administrative angle.”
Dwindling Enforcement
The options might not be so easy.
Staff who depend on e-bikes proceed to purchase and cost unsafe, off-label batteries, that are cheaper. Retailers and on-line retailers proceed to promote them.
At instances, town forms has struggled to reply, even once they’re clearly warned of potential hazard. In February 2023, journalist Fazil Khan perished in a raging hearth in Harlem that erupted in an condominium under him the place tenants have been charging a number of batteries. Callers to 311 had warned town weeks earlier, however there was no response.
That very same 12 months, the Metropolis Council took the primary main step to confronting this subject, passing a regulation banning the sale of lithium-ion batteries that weren’t security licensed. This was an important step: Hearth officers say batteries which are licensed by the Underwriters Laboratory (UL) or aren’t charged through their producer’s authorised charger are susceptible to bursting into flame. The ensuing chemical hearth is tough to extinguish — and spreads shortly.
Since then, nevertheless, enforcement of the ban has wavered, in line with Division of Shopper & Employee Safety (DCWP) data obtained by The Metropolis Reporter.
The regulation went into impact Sept. 1, 2023, whereas Eric Adams was mayor, and within the first 4 months his DCWP launched a wave of inspections citywide, issuing summons to 105 retailers at a price of greater than 26 per thirty days.
In 2024 the company issued summons to 108 companies over 12 months, which dropped the speed to 9 per thirty days. Then in 2025, the final 12 months of the Adams administration, enforcement fell even additional, with summons issued to simply 46 sellers all 12 months for a price of lower than 4 per thirty days.
In 2026, the primary 12 months of the Mamdani administration, enforcement obtained off to a gradual begin. By the start of August, DCWP had issued summons to simply 26 sellers, however in August and September town launched a sweep, bringing the full to 68 retailers hit with summons by final week. That was nonetheless a price of just below seven per thirty days.
And data present a few of these retailers broke the regulation time and again, with some being hit with a number of summons for promoting unsafe batteries because the regulation went into impact.
DCWP spokesperson Stephany Vasquez Sanchez mentioned the company “focuses on bringing companies that remained in violation of (the regulation) into compliance,” and the company’s techniques of shutting down repeat offenders “have improved compliance.”
“We’ve discovered that nearly all of companies keep in compliance as soon as they realized to promote protected and licensed units,” she mentioned. “We’ll proceed our work to make sure compliance on this trade, particularly to carry recidivist companies accountable with our full authority.”
One other effort to get the supply drivers who depend on e-bikes to cease utilizing non-certified batteries kicked off in June 2025 beneath a regulation sponsored by then-Councilmember Keith Powers. The regulation created an change program for eligible drivers to show of their unsafe batteries for people who have been UL listed.
However the change program expired in 2025.
Final week after the Sundown Park disaster, Powers, now a state assemblymember, took to social media to name on the Mamdani administration to “resume that program and save lives.”
What Can Washington Do?
One other elected official who’s tried to staunch the sale of unsafe batteries is Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-The Bronx), whose district contains the Patterson Homes the place a battery hearth final month killed 4 tenants, together with an 11-year-old boy, two teenage boys and a 33-year-old girl.
In 2024, after which once more in 2025, Torres sponsored a invoice that might require the Shopper Product Security Fee to determine a security customary for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries utilized in micromobility units equivalent to electrical scooters and bikes. Nationally retailers could be barred from promoting batteries that don’t meet these requirements. In each years, an awesome and bipartisan Home majority voted for it.
The invoice, however, has been unable to get to the ground of the Senate, the place Torres mentioned it might even be overwhelmingly supported. The impediment, he says, is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who’s employed a tactic that enables a single senator to dam a invoice from attending to the ground, with out rationalization.
Torres is marginally optimistic that the Democratic wave gave management of Congress to his occasion “would enhance the prospects” of the invoice seeing the sunshine of day.
However, Torres added, “a Republican minority within the Senate might stay an impediment.”
“I see it as a matter of life and demise,” the congressman mentioned. “Poorly manufactured lithium ion batteries are actually ticking time-bombs and it’s communities just like the Bronx which are hardest hit.”
Lastly the lethal hearth within the Patterson Homes in The Bronx final month solid a highlight on one other try to forestall extra of those fires from costing lives.
In 2023, the identical 12 months the council handed the regulation barring the sale of uncertified batteries, the New York Metropolis Housing Authority (NYCHA) was contemplating prohibiting the charging of e-bike batteries, licensed or not, on all public housing property. That September they dropped that plan and as an alternative adopted a compromise: households might cost one battery per unit, so long as it was safety-certified and the charging couldn’t block any exit from the condominium.
Since then, that compromise answer has been adopted by no fewer than 53 e-bike battery fires in NYCHA flats. Within the Patterson Homes blaze, the residents have been charging the battery within the kitchen, in a spot that blocked the household from escaping.
