No the advice is don't try to put out a fire with your bare hands. All sympathy to the injured party but c'mon really?
EE recalls Power Bar phone chargers after explosion burns woman
EE has recalled thousands of Power Bar phone chargers just days after a woman ended up in hospital when one of the devices exploded, causing injury to her hands and damage to the victim's property. The UK's biggest mobile operator said it was aware of a small number of incidents where the power pack had overheated, posing a …
COMMENTS
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 19:13 GMT Martin Summers
No it shouldn't have caught fire in the beginning, that's for granted and also completely nothing to do with my comment. So you can have your bollocks back.
The charger caught fire and went under her bed. Does her bed have no sheets or quilt to smother the fire in, was there really nothing else to hand to do that with other than injuring herself?
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Thursday 6th August 2015 11:48 GMT andy gibson
Re: Nasty
Can't speak for anyone else but I don't have any problem with EE (Orange). 3G is always strong (better than some places free wifi) and I pay a tenner every two months to top up my PAYG phone. As soon as I top up a tenner I get 300 free texts and 1Gb of data.
When that runs out at the end of the month I just run down the accumulated credit, which tends to last another month, when I top up again.
-
-
-
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Thursday 6th August 2015 08:41 GMT Vince
Re: Everyone's fingers burnt with Everything Everywhere
"Do you actually have an EE phone that stays connected to the masts and keeps the number in service?"
Haha. Good one. Except that wasn't a joke of course. I had the misfortune of moving to EE earlier this year. It lasted 6 weeks, and I forced them to terminate my agreement and allow me to move back to my previous provider (3). Should never have left - went from having signal almost everywhere, and data that just worked (and texts, and calls), to a service that was utterly terrible in every way.
Services just didn't work (Blackberry Blend) - would connect once in a blue moon once I had EE, streaming my TV from home... no chance, totally unreliable, signal... always CLAIMED to be there, but in reality calls went to voicemail, messages were delayed, and even when it was "working" I'd suddenly get no IP throughput for 2-3 minutes and then every now and then around 30 minutes.
EE blamed the area I was in (although in that time I went on holiday up north, and had the same issues there as I did at home), my handset (although same handset worked fine on 3, had been reconfigured by EE and reprovisioned to the EE preferences, and in any case I had the same issues with another handset (went there, tried that), my home connection (for the streaming issue - really? My "connects at" 80/20 and gets "78/18" real world throughput service randomly couldn't cope with streaming (but an FTP could get 18 meg if I was lucky so not a route issue), and so on...
Moved back to 3, same handset, same areas, works fine. During my time on EE, I spent most of it tethering my phone to my other handset which still was with 3 so I could do stuff.
-
-
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 21:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Everyone's fingers burnt with Everything Everywhere
12p! I'd better move to Vodafone. Or maybe not, given it's 14p on PAYG with Vodafone!
In reality, SMS is getting less relevant as people have / are migrating to apps (WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.) so Data is where you want to be spending your money!
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Thursday 6th August 2015 07:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Everyone's fingers burnt with Everything Everywhere
"Do you actually have an EE phone that stays connected to the masts and keeps the number in service?"
Can you call the number ancd get through to voice mail when you can't get to the phone?
yes?
Then you have a working number.
Bitching about signal?
Ever thought it may be your phone? Or the case it's in?
Break out a cheap as chips bog standard phone and see how good a signal you get then, chances are way better then most smartphones.
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 14:35 GMT Rabbit80
Compensation
According to the terms, a maximum £3000 for a single incident or £6000 for a series of incidents within a 12 month period! Considering the damage suffered to property and the burns/surgery required I'm not too sure its worth the risk!
See document below - Sections 3.5 - 3.7
http://ee.co.uk/content/dam/ee-help/Help-PDFs/EE-PAYM-PAYG-EE-Power-Terms-Updates-30062015-v4F.PDF
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 20:58 GMT Tapeador
Re: Compensation
Nicely spotted! There's so much law on this issue - there had to be as people were literally killing other people accidentally and then saying "oh sorry you agreed I wouldn't be liable". For your delectation:
s 4 Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977
4 Unreasonable indemnity clauses.
(1) A person dealing as consumer cannot by reference to any contract term be made to indemnify another person (whether a party to the contract or not) in respect of liability that may be incurred by the other for negligence or breach of contract, except in so far as the contract term satisfies the requirement of reasonableness.
.....
s 5 Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999
Unfair Terms
5.—(1) A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer.
...
I think there are also important rules about incorporation of onerous terms in consumer contracts - so if they're not flagged up prominently they may not get incorporated into the contract. The famous 'red hand rule' - I'm not actually 100% sure it's good law but it's a good idea.
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 14:49 GMT TonyJ
Interestingly
I have one of these things, though rarely used. It is not from the same batch, but my son complained that when he used it, it was getting extremely hot. Since then it's remained pretty much unused and I suspect will do so until we are certain it's only limited to the one batch.
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 15:31 GMT Dr. Ellen
With great power comes great hazard.
The more energy you stuff into an object, the more trouble it can cause if it gets loose. Since batteries are good at rapidly letting loose the energy, that ends up being either a fire or an explosion, depending on the details. The batteries of tomorrow will be even better at holding energy -- let us hope they are better at holding on to it as well.
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 17:34 GMT JakeMS
Glad...
Glad I didn't get one of these. Although you can find other non-EE ones on Amazon and such like which do the same thing. Judging by this article, it's probably safer too :-).
PS: Why did she try to put a fire out with her hand? Damp cloth, glass/bucket of water (depending on size of fire) would of done just fine without burning your hand..
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 17:55 GMT Cynic_999
Re: Glad...
When you wake up and see a few relatively small flames, trying to pat them out with your hand can be an instinctive reaction done before you have started thinking straight. If the burning object is sticky (like molten plastic or nylon), you get very nasty burns after just a single pat.
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 20:25 GMT Richard 12
Re: Glad...
You don't use water on electrical fires.
Also, Lithium reacts with water quite enthusiastically.
Also, most people don't have a tap in their bedroom.
Finally - do you know how you would react to waking up to a fire?
Unless you've had special training, you would probably panic to some extent, and it's very unlikely that you'd use the most appropriate firefighting technique.
She did well enough.
-
Wednesday 5th August 2015 23:44 GMT JakeMS
Re: Glad...
"Do you know how you'd react waking up to a fire?"
Yes, I would just use my dry powder fire extinguisher that's on the wall next to the home office door :-). That's what it's there for, in case of electrical fires as electrical equipment is always running in office it would be silly not to have and know how to use one.
But I know most people don't have such things around the house. But still, it is what I would do and how I'd react.
-
-
-
Thursday 6th August 2015 00:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Lithium battery fires are very fast, hot, and hard to put out
Like a firework, as a youtube browse will show.
Best thing is to put it on metal away from anything flammable or chuck it out the door/window if you can.
The fire-guy at work always cautioned about having powder extinguishers at home as the powder is chokingly ghastly if used in a confined space (and if young children release the extinguisher by accident).
I probably ought to get CO2 extinguisher for home (maybe powder as well)...
-
Thursday 6th August 2015 07:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Lithium Fire
Up top there's an argument about whether she should have used her hands to put out the fire. While I would hope I'd find something else to use if I woke up and found my bed on fire I don't know what I'd do.
Anyway, this was a fire caused presumably by lithium batteries. That is not going to be an easy fire to put out and smothering it may or may not work. If the battery has shorted out internally I could ever imagine a situation where covering it up could make things worse e.g. the heat from the short can't escape melting the insides causing an explosion.
If you assume hot metallic lithium has become exposed to the air then throwing water on it isn't going to be a good idea. It was a long time ago now but I seem to remember when I worked in a lab we were told to throw sodium bicarbonate on the fire. I can just imagine someone rooting through their kitchen cupboard while their house burns down.
My personal plan for lithium fires included two steps 1) Don't cause a fire 2) If step one has failed run away.
-
Thursday 6th August 2015 21:46 GMT Ed_UK
Re: Lithium Fire
Lithium fires are for wusses. Go and read about chlorine trifluoride; that's the stuff that sets SAND on fire. Delightful notes at:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php
Excerpt:
<<
The compound [is] also a stronger oxidizing agent than oxygen itself, which also puts it into rare territory. That means that it can potentially go on to “burn” things that you would normally consider already burnt to hell and gone, and a practical consequence of that is that it’ll start roaring reactions with things like bricks and asbestos tile.
>>
-
-
Thursday 6th August 2015 07:58 GMT Jason Hindle
Probably a one-off faulty unit
Any EE store has a bunch of these all charging up at the same time, in close proximity to each other, in a drawer. We haven't had any major EE store fires in the news.
Mine's the one with E1-04 on it, and yes it does get pretty warm - I'd be wary of using it in extreme warm weather (not that we're getting much of that).