The spectacular e-bike battery explosion that torched a two-story house in Multnomah County last week is part of a surge in lithium-ion battery fires.
The fast-moving blaze started around 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 5, emergency dispatch records show. By the time Gresham and Corbett firefighters arrived at the home along the Historic Columbia River Highway, the house was overrun with heavy flames, Gresham Fire Marshal Shawn Durham told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email.
All six residents of the house were evacuated safely, and the fire was under control within an hour, Durham said. No one was injured by the blaze, but the residents’ cat died in the fire, he said.
Lithium-ion batteries have become a staple of modern life in recent years, used in everything from phones and laptops to cordless power tools and electric lawnmowers. But they’re vulnerable to thermal runaway reactions, a chemical domino effect where the battery heats up enough to damage other parts of the battery, which releases still more heat, the Fire Safety Research Institute says. Even in cases where the rechargeable batteries don’t explode, they can generate enough heat to start fires in their surrounding environment – or off-gas plumes of toxic smoke.
Durham said that his department responded to two lithium-ion battery fires caused by power tools in October, a trend seen across the Portland area, the state and the U.S..
In 2024, two lithium-ion battery explosions burned down two different Portland homes on the same day. The month before, an e-scooter’s battery exploded while the vehicle was parked inside an apartment building, setting the building ablaze. In April 2025, multiple lithium-ion batteries exploded in Portland State University’s Engineering Building while students were using them to power a project, forcing more than 100 students and staff to evacuate.
The state had 649 lithium-ion battery fires between 2020 and 2025, with the number of incidents increasing by an average of 19% a year, according to an Oregon State Fire Marshal report published in September.
Experts caution people to avoid dropping or damaging lithium-ion batteries, and to dispose of them if they show visible defects. If a battery does show signs of a thermal runaway reaction — such as being overly hot to the touch, bulging or smoking — officials recommend submerging the device underwater for at least 48 hours before taking it to a disposal center.
The most common devices that saw battery fires were e-bikes, scooters and remote-control cars, the fire marshal’s report found, and just over half of the incidents happened in a private home.
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