Rory Mitchell was having a relaxing Saturday night watching Netflix with his girlfriend.
“After the show was done, I exited out of Netflix and then turned the laptop off and closed it and put it away for the night — just put it away on my bedside table like I have pretty well every night since I was a university student,” he said.
Three hours after Mitchell fell asleep, he was woken up by his girlfriend shaking him. His laptop was engulfed by four-foot high flames.
“When I finally kind of came to out of a dead sleep and realized what was going on, I sprinted to the kitchen, knew that we had a couple fire extinguishers on hand, pulled the pin and ran back to my room and sprayed it down to try and control the fire,” he continued.
“Thankfully the only damage done was the laptop and the table that it was on. There was no damage to the mattress, the floor, the house was completely untouched for the most part.”
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“It’s an older model laptop, it’s about ten years old, but regardless, it’s a MacBook Pro — it’s been reliable since the day I got it,” Mitchell said, noting that most people with laptops find they do get warm from time to time. “So did mine, but never would I have thought that I’d wake up to an emergency like this.”
After the incident, he spoke to several friends who happen to be firefighters. They said it was “godsend” he’d even had a fire extinguisher, as many people don’t have one in their homes these days.
Mitchell believes the battery is to blame for the blaze. He thinks it was a freak overheating incident or malfunction that caused an electrical fire, but he’ll find out more details when he speaks to representatives from Apple’s safety department in the coming days.
Ron Navasca manages the computer department at London Drugs. He said Mitchell is likely right in thinking the fire was related to the battery.
“We’ve recognized that this particular device was about ten years old — it’s recommended that batteries be changed actually every two or three years, or when it’s starting to recognize the battery’s not retaining the charge it used to be,” Navasca said.
“By replacing a battery that is about two, three years old or longer especially, you’re basically assuring that you’re going to get fresh components inside and you’re going to mitigate the risk of that happening.”
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Mitchell said he’s never heard of anything similar happening to anyone he knows, though he was aware of issues with batteries in Samsung products.
He normally leaves his laptop plugged in, even when it is off.
“The kicker is thinking of the what if, what could have happened. My grandmother lives with my Dad and I and she’s 97,” Mitchell said. “If this happened while she was home alone — never mind just the house — it’s not something you really want to think about.”
“It was kind of best case scenario that it happened while we were right there.”
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