A teen in the USA suffered some pretty nasty burns after his portable charger that he was charging for his day ahead of him at school caught alight and blew up.
Colton Pingree, from Tuolumne, California, suffered second degree burns because of the incident, which also left parts of his bedding on fire.
The 15 year old, confused and in pain, awoke on the floor of his bedroom at around 2:30am when he discovered his back was badly hurt and there was a strange smell in his room.
“I looked up and both of my comforters and one of my pillows was on fire,” Colton explained.
“The fire was probably about 4 inches long and 5 inches wide and [the explosion] literally pushed me off the bed.
“I woke up in a panic – I stood up and started grabbing the fire with my bare hands and rolling it out.
His back was badly hurt.
“After I got the flames out I grabbed a water bottle I had by my bed and I had a small pocket knife besides me, so I poked a hole at the top of the cap and started spraying the spots that were still smouldering and red.”
Before telling anyone about the incident, he bravely tackled the fire himself, as mentioned above, and then cleverly threw the portable charger in the toilet, to put it out and keep it out too.
After telling his dad about it, they both thought it was maybe some bruises and bad sunburn, but as Coltons pain got worse, his dad took him to the ER.
The family are now sharing the story, making it clear that electronics can catch fire at any moment, so you must stay vigilant and be responsible with them – so this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. So much more could have gone wrong on this occasion, but thankfully it didn’t.
Coltons injuries are thankfully said to be healing well and on the subject of sleeping with electronics, he had this to say: “Don’t keep charging packs with you when you’re sleeping – just have them away from you and somewhere that’s not easy to catch on fire,” warned Colton.
“I’ll also put my phone off the side of my bed – it could cause another thing like that to happen again.
“I suggest that others don’t sleep with them either as it could happen to anyone – I never expected that.”
