E-Bike Battery Explodes in Living Room and Destroys Oregon Home: Six Escape, a Cat Dies, and the Moment Spreads Online
On the night of November 5, a two-story home on East Historic Columbia River Highway in Troutdale, Multnomah County, Oregon, caught fire. According to local stations KPTV, KATU and KOIN, the fire began with a lithium-ion e-bike battery in the living room; after the battery exploded, flames engulfed the house within minutes. All six people inside escaped without injury, and a resident's cat died. Security-camera and phone video the homeowner posted later spread across social media, showing the battery smoking, popping and then filling the living room with flame.
The battery belonged to 15-year-old Preston Williams, whose mother, Kari Ann Peniche, had given him the e-bike as a Christmas gift. He told KPTV that after riding home that night he had just fixed the bike and left the battery unplugged on a padded chair in the living room, then noticed a strange smell. He and a friend traced the smell to the smoking battery; Williams filmed it as it popped once and then blew up in the middle of the room. He called 911 and waited outside, while his mother ran upstairs to alert Kelli Gasaway and her partner, who lived upstairs. Gasaway compared the blast to "a hand grenade going off underneath you," and said the upstairs was already full of smoke by the time she got out.
Shawn Durham, battalion chief and fire marshal with Gresham Fire and Rescue, told KATU that investigators determined the fire was caused by the failure and explosion of the e-bike's lithium-ion battery, and that all six people escaped uninjured; because the street has no fire hydrants, Corbett Fire brought water tenders. Reports differ on whether the battery was charging: some coverage described it as exploding while charging, while Peniche and her son said it was unplugged and resting on a chair, and both accounts are presented here. Neither the bike's brand nor the battery's maker has been named, and no formal investigation report has been published.
In an Instagram post, Peniche said the family lost nearly everything they owned, including clothes, photographs and items built up over a lifetime. "I had absolutely no idea a battery could cause this much destruction in such a short amount of time," she wrote. "Please be careful with e-bikes, scooters and anything powered by rechargeable lithium batteries." According to the Oregon State Fire Marshal, fire agencies in the state responded to 649 lithium-ion battery-related fires from 2020 through 2025, with the yearly total rising from 74 in 2020 to 161 in 2025.
Source: KPTV
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：电动自行车资料图（Traumrune摄，CC BY 3.0，经Wikimedia Commons），画面中的车不是涉事车辆，已裁为精确16:9。/ An electric bicycle (file photo by Traumrune, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons); the bike pictured is not the one involved. Pre-cropped to an exact 16:9 frame.
