Deadly lithium-ion battery fires spur NYC Council to hold emergency hearing
The New York City Council will hold an emergency oversight hearing to discuss new strategies for curbing lithium-ion battery fires in the wake of a pair of devastating infernos in Brooklyn and the Bronx that together claimed 10 lives.
At the Nov. 20 hearing, Council members will "examine fire safety laws, enforcement practices and public education efforts around lithium-ion battery safety and storage," according to an NYC Council post on X.
"The alarming increase in residential fires in NYC — particularly involving lithium-ion batteries — is an issue we must address," said Council Speaker Julie Menin . "The Council's oversight hearing is an important first step toward doing just that."
The hearing was announced just one day after the city's deadliest fire of 2026 ripped through a Brooklyn home, killing six on Thursday.
Four adults were found dead in the two-story house on 58th St. near Seventh Ave. in Sunset Park after the flames were extinguished. The victims were badly burned and investigators are still working to identify them.
In addition, a man and a woman in their 50s died at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn after being pulled from the fire in cardiac arrest by firefighters.
Two lithium-ion batteries were found in the burned-out home, but it remained unclear Friday if they sparked the blaze that broke out on the building's top floor.
Just one week earlier, four members of a Bronx family were killed when an lithium-ion battery exploded inside their 11th-floor apartment in Mott Haven's Patterson Houses.
Eleven-year-old Zion Maine died at Jacobi Medical Center the day of the blaze. His brothers, CJ Maine, 15, and Jamaree Adam, 16, and his father's 33-year-old girlfriend, Syida Adam, all died in the hospital over the next two days.
Fire officials said an e-bike, newly acquired by the father, was being charged next to the apartment's entry door — the family's only means of escape. The father, Courtney Maine, 37, remains in a medically induced coma in the burn ICU at Harlem Hospital.
The four fatalities from the Bronx blaze raised the lithium-ion battery fire death toll to 10 so far this year, FDNY officials said. The deadly Sunset Park fire's cause remains under investigation.
Eighty-six people have died in fires across the city this year to date, a steep jump from 44 deaths in the same time period last year, according to the FDNY.
There was only one fatality linked to a lithium-ion battery fire in 2025. In 2024, there were six deaths, and in 2023 the city recorded its highest number of fatal fires sparked by the batteries with 18 victims.
The number of fires linked to lithium-ion batteries has also jumped this year to 401 as of last week, according to department data.
In all of 2025, there were 292 blazes, officials said. Injuries from e-bike battery fires have gone up, too. This year, lithium-ion battery fires have caused 74 fires versus 51 last year.
In 2019, when the FDNY first started tracking these fires, only 13 blazes were attributed to the batteries. By 2020, the number had more than tripled to 44, and continued to rise until the number of fires started to fall in 2024, according to FDNY officials.
Despite an aggressive public safety campaign and repeated warnings about how to properly store and charge e-bikes and e-scooters, tragedies like the one that befell 11-year-old Zion Maine and his family continue, FDNY officials said.
