Tuesday, Sep 11 2018 04:15 PM
How safe are your valuables — your jewellery, heirlooms, collectibles, art pieces, memorabilia, educational and achievement certificates, etc — at home?
Just last month, a video of an electric scooter in a living room exploding while being charged, engulfing the place in flames, was circulated on social media1. A phone that exploded while it was being charged resulted in the death of a Malaysian CEO and his bed catching fire2. A Personal Mobility Device (PMD) was probably behind another raging fire that consumed the living room and three bedrooms of a maisonette unit in January this year3.
A fire caused by the overnight charging of an electric bicycle injured an infant and three other residents of a HDB block in October 20174. An electric scooter left to charge overnight was responsible for another fire in a HDB flat, causing three people to flee the unit, in July 201765.
The risk of fire is ever present, even in safety-conscious Singapore. We hear it in the news; we read about it on social media.
The number of fire calls the SCDF responded to in 2017 was the lowest recorded in 40 years — but that number was still 3,8716, i.e. an average of 10.6 fires every day! Of these, the number occurring in residential premises was 2,657, a staggering rate of 7.3 residential fires a day.
And the number of fires involving electric scooters jumped almost 350 percent last year6. The main reasons for this appear to be the use of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used in most PMDs, according to the SCDF, coupled with overcharging of these batteries.
The insurance industry has a term — High-Impact, Low-Probability — to describe events that are unlikely to happen but that can have devastating consequences. A fire in your home is one such event, and one you can easily take precautions for. Do you still want to keep your valuables at home?
Sources:
Copyright © Vault@268 Pte Ltd Author: Vinay Kumar Rai