Fire That Killed Mother and Three Children Started by Lithium Battery

A house fire that killed a family in Merseyside was started by a lithium-ion battery after “an electrical event” caused the battery “to go into thermal runaway”. The Telegraph has more.

Elisha Brabin, 36, and her children Leo, 16, Ellis, eight, and Prudence, seven, died in the blaze at their home in Bootle last week.

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) and Merseyside Police have now concluded that the cause of the fire was “an electrical event causing a lithium-ion battery to go into thermal runaway”.

Lithium-ion batteries are used in devices such as laptops, mobile phones, e-scooters, e-bikes, e-cigarettes and mobility vehicles.

The fire service said the nature of the device that caused the fire was still under investigation.

MFRS previously said four people were found “showing no signs of life” in an upstairs bedroom of a semi-detached house at around 3.45am on Tuesday.

Neighbours had reported waking up to screaming and shouting.

“One man was shouting: ‘Get them out’,” a resident told the Telegraph, adding: “I didn’t realise what it was at first, then I saw all the blue lights and knew it was serious. It’s so sad.”

Brabin is understood to have had four children with her husband Kane, the fourth having stayed elsewhere that evening.

The fire service said one man had been taken to hospital after being found outside the property.

Kev Johnson, the fire service’s head of prevention, commended the efforts of fire crews and offered his condolences to the family and friends of the victims.

He added: “This tragedy highlights the very real risks posed by lithium-ion batteries, which we confirmed as the source of the fire.”

Between April 2023 and August 2026, there have been 150 fires linked to items containing lithium-ion batteries in Merseyside.

Sixty-seven of the 150 fires occurred in a private property. Of these incidents in someone’s home, 30 of them occurred between 9pm and 8am.

Since April 2023 there have been five fatalities in Merseyside related to lithium-ion batteries, which is more than a quarter of all fatalities in fires during that period.

Worth reading in full.