Fidget spinner becomes force of destruction after sparking blaze inside car
Fidget spinners, like all fads, burned bright and hot for a short few weeks before fizzling out as kids moved on to the next thing. Well, that is, except for at least one.
This one burned bright and hot enough to catch a car on fire, officials say.
Firefighters from Colonial Park, Penn., posted photos on Facebook of the aftermath of a car fire they say they’d been called to earlier in July. The photos show the interior of a car, especially the front passenger side, badly burned.
The seat is scorched to the foam. A beaded seat cover is a melted, charred mess. The car roof and floor are black with soot. Amid the damage, firefighters spied a bright green clue: a combo fidget spinner and Bluetooth speaker.
“Last week, Engine 33 responded to a report of a car fire ... and arrived to find a car which was mostly extinguished by the owner prior to arrival,” the firefighters wrote. “Crews found a rechargeable fidget spinner with Bluetooth speaker that had been charging on the seat which appeared to have malfunctioned.”
It’s not the first time one of the toys has caught fire. At the height of the craze in summer and fall of 2017, reports of electric fidget spinners combusting peppered local news reports.
In Gardendale, Ala., a boy who’d just plugged the device in to charge screamed as he discovered the fidget spinner burning on the floor, WBRC reported. “I was downstairs and all I heard was ‘fire..fire and the fidget spinner had literally, It was smoking, It was in flames,” his mother told the station in June of that year.
Another mom in Michigan said her spinner caught fire on her counter after being charged for about a half hour, according to NBC 25.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission even published a statement warning about the danger of fires.
“Like any battery-operated product, consumers should be present and pay attention to their devices while charging them. It is important to use the charging cable that either comes with the fidget spinner or one that has the correct connections for the device as charging cables are NOT interchangeable,” the agency wrote.