A serious fire broke out last night (Saturday to Sunday) in a house in Kohav Yaakov in Binyamin. This house was divided into several housing units and the results were dramatic: a mother died from her injuries and 19 other people were injured, including two seriously: an 8-year-old child with third-degree burns on 30% of his body. his body and a man in his forties.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the fire was caused by an electric bicycle battery that was being charged. The whole house burned.
Magen David Adom paramedic Avi Zarug arrived first on the scene. He says: “I arrived very quickly and saw thick smoke coming from the first floor of the house. Outside, I saw children and young people being pulled out of the burning house by their parents. Most suffered from smoke inhalation and burns. They saved the children one after the other. At one point, the woman did not come out. After a few minutes, the firefighters took her out of the house unconscious. She was taken to hospital in very serious condition as paramedics attempted to revive her. An eight-year-old child and an adult suffered from burns and smoke inhalation and were taken to hospital in serious condition, all the others, including people who came to help, were more lightly injured. The parents saved all the children. It was a very serious incident which ended in tragedy”.
Video: Firefighters
Firefighter Commander Rony Yaakov wanted to sound the alarm after this tragedy: “As soon as we entered the house, we could see that there was a very large fire on the first floor. The investigation shows that it was an electric bicycle that was connected to electricity that caused the fire, caused significant smoke that spread throughout the house. In addition, the bicycle was located at the entrance of the house and blocked the passage to be able to pick up the occupants of the house. In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in cases of fires related to electric bicycles and lithium batteries. We call on the public to pay attention to three safety principles:
- Use only batteries that comply with standards
- Do not modify the batteries
- Do not leave the bike unattended while charging, unplug it as soon as charging is complete”.
