Stop charging your phone at night: Montreal fire department

Montreal warns of battery fires Montreal fire officials urge caution after a rise in lithium battery fires, advising against overnight phone charging.

The Montreal fire department spent hours Monday battling a battery fire inside a container at the Port of Montreal.

It was loaded with 15,000 kilograms of lithium batteries.

The heat from the container was so strong that the airport fire service team was called in.

"They sent one of their trucks because on the aircraft firefighting vehicles, there's a telescopic boom with a piercing nozzle," Matthew Griffith, section chief in prevention at the Montreal fire department, said.

"We ended up using that to actually pierce through the metal of the container."

Griffith says Montreal has seen about 40 battery fires this year. Three years ago, the city had about seven.

"It's an emerging risk that we're really starting to have to deal with," Griffith said.

"It's not just Montreal, it's all fire departments, in North America and internationally."

The fire department has a list of safety tips that people should apply, including charging their phones while they are awake. Homes should be equipped with working smoke alarms.

Griffith says somewhere in the container, a battery had a thermal runaway. That causes the battery to heat up and can be difficult to control.

"The battery ends up self consuming and it just continues to burn until all the cells have burnt in the battery," Griffith said. "The reaction is quite violent and rapid."

This year's fire prevention week in Montreal will focus on lithium batteries.