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Cell Phone Ignites, California Man Severely Burned

By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.com

January 17, 2007

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A Vallejo, Calif. man has been hospitalized after he suffered severe body burns when his cell phone burst into flames.

Luis Picaso, 59, was reported in critical condition at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento after a cell phone caught fire in his pants pocket late Saturday night in a hotel. The phone ignited his clothes and the sleeping Picaso suffered burns on 50 percent of his body.

It probably would have been worse, but the hotel's sprinkler system distinguished the flames, fire officials said.

Bill Tweedy, spokesman for the Vallejo Fire Department, called it a freak accident and he and other officials refuse to reveal the manufacturer of the cell phone. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) did not return two telephone calls about the matter today.

"It seems like this was just an accident," Tweedy told the Vallejo Times-Herald. "Maybe the power button was depressed for a long time while in his pocket or there was some sort of short circuit in the phone."

Although this is the first known case of someone being seriously harmed by a cell phone, it's not the first case of a cell phone combusting.

In 2004, a 16-year-old Ontario, Calif., girl's phone burst into "fist-size flames" without warning, said Frank Huddleston, an investigator at the Ontario fire department. Huddleston said he suspects the phone's battery overheated.

Witnesses said the victim had the phone in her back pocket, when it "let out a whoosh," bulged, then shot out flames and smoke. She was treated for second-degree burns and released.

In March 2006, a dog potentially saved a 15-year-old's life after a Motorola cell phone caught fire in a bed while the boy was asleep. The dog pulled the phone off the bed and the boy smothered the flame with his pillow. The boy received minor burns on his hand.

In all of the previous known cases, the battery was to blame and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has responded with recalls of three different cell phone batteries.

In 2004 The CPSC recalled batteries from the Kyocera Smartphone, Kyocera Slider and Verizon Wireless LG counterfeit batteries.

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Cell phone batteries are Lithium ion, the same type of batteries involved in the widely publicized laptop battery recalls. The batteries contain a lot of power in a very small package making them particularly prone to combustion, according to a CPSC report.

"You have to pack more and more energy into a small package, and when you're doing that you're really creating a little bomb, especially when the battery is fully charged," said Carl Hilliard, president of the Wireless Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit organization that has tallied several incidents involving people injured by "exploding cell phones."

The CPSC released a precautionary guide for consumers with cell phones.

The CPSC's spokespeople did not return two phone calls tomade this morning on whether they know the maker of the California cell phone and whether there is a pending investigation.

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