The neighbor of a Boynton Beach family managed to grab a burning hoverboard from inside a home and throw it outside before anyone was hurt, firefighters say.
Thursday night’s incident is the first hoverboard fire that Boynton Beach Fire Rescue has been called to, but Deputy Chief Greg Hoggatt knows there have been similar mishaps around the country and around South Florida.
Last month, a Boca Raton woman told police that her daughter was playing on a hoverboard, an electronic scooter, when it got hot and burst into flames.
“If I had an appliance that was catching fire across the country, I would choose not to keep it in my house,” Hoggatt said.
The Boynton Beach fire happened at about 6 p.m. Thursday at a home on South Palm Drive, near Seacrest Boulevard.
Hoggatt said the hoverboard was plugged in and charging when it caught fire.
“It popped and cracked and then it caught fire,” Hoggatt said. “A neighbor was able to grab the unit and throw it outside.”
The neighbor, Josh Andrews, told Sun Sentinel news partner WPEC-Ch. 12 that when the board began sparking, it sounded like a gun going off.
“There was some, pow! pow!,” he said, “so I looked over there and their front door was open and a big ol’ blaze of fire came out.”
Hoggatt says given the falls and fires involving hoverboards, he would ask people to think twice about using them. People who do want to use the scooters, he says, should find an “extremely safe” area to charge the device – possibly outside and away from structures.
“The last thing we would want is for it to catch fire in the middle of the night and cause damage or loss of life,” Hoggatt said.
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