Skip said in a statement on Twitter that the fire was not a scooter fire, and was not a charging-related fire. “The storage bin contained batteries removed as a result of the proper operation of Skip’s quality control process,” the company wrote. “Our D.C. warehouse team is working with experts to expedite the disposal of used batteries and is fully cooperating in the investigation.”
The latest fire comes after a parked Skip scooter caught fire on a sidewalk in late May. The company suspended operations for a short time after that fire, too, though it said at the time that they had “no reason to believe this affects any other vehicles in our fleet.” Skip reportedly addressed some “risk factors” that made it more likely for a fire like this to happen again, DDOT told the Post, though the agency did not specify what those risk factors were. The company put tamper-resistant battery cages on the scooters. The company found the cause of the fire was likely to be some kind of damage to the scooter, reports the Post.
There have also been additional fires at the Skip warehouse. Maggiolo tells DCist that the department responded to a very similar fire in September 2018, in the same basement storage area. That time, a scooter in charging mode went up in flames and triggered the smoke alarms and the sprinkler system. That fire was also ruled accidental, and “the result of an unspecified electrical event.”
The Washington Post reports that there was yet another warehouse fire in October. DDOT reportedly learned about those additional fires on Wednesday and issued the suspension, according to the outlet.
Read full story https://dcist.com/story/19/06/20/city-suspends-skips-scooter-license-after-warehouse-fire/
