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TAYLORSVILLE, Utah Jane Jensen went to jump in her car last month, only to discover the burnt interior. Car seats, vents, floor mats and the ceiling were melted down and burnt. The windows of the cars were opaque black from smoke from a fire. The smell was awful.
It happened in the middle of the night and went out, Jensen said, attributing the car windows being rolled up so the fire eventually ran out of air. Luck everywhere, or blessed, one of them.
It certainly could have been a lot worse.
The fire started inside the garage, where Jensen did not have smoke detectors. His bedroom and the garage share a wall. She slept about 10 meters away.
It really could have been a disaster and I’m so grateful it didn’t, she said.
The fire left a mess and a mystery. Jensen said the fire response team was baffled by what caused the blaze.
A fire investigator, however, combed through the debris and found the culprit.
He said, you have a bag of batteries here. And I said, yeah, I’m about to recycle them, ”Jensen recalls.
Something had passed through the terminals of a 9-volt battery, possibly another battery, which started the fire, the fire expert told Jensen.
Jensen said she had never heard that 9-volt batteries could be responsible for a fire, but KSL investigators found press releases and news articles from firefighters across the country talking about this issue.
Federal regulators have heard of it as well. The Consumer Product Safety Commission notes “consumer complaints” about batteries causing a “fire”. Some have had disastrous results.
In 2015, a house fire in Colorado made headlines after a handful of 9-volt batteries were thrown into a paper bag for recycling. Ironically, the owner told investigators the batteries had been replaced with smoke detectors.
Unified Fire Authority firefighter Patrick Costin said he had also seen 9-volt batteries causing fires in homes. He said many battery fires tend to start in kitchen waste drawers, when a piece of metal comes in contact with both battery terminals.
It could be pennies, other stacks, the random fork your kid puts in at night, Costin said. Just the perfect mix of things come together and cause a fire.
By design, 9 volt batteries are more dangerous than other types of batteries because the terminals are close to each other and can easily be crossed.
The good news, Costin said, is that there is a solution and the solution is easy. When storing batteries, place a piece of tape over the terminals. This way, if the battery pushes against a piece of metal, there is always a buffer.
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