The Morning Sentinelreports that a teenage girl in Maine was severely burned when her iPhone 5C caught fire while in her pocket at school.
The girl, whose name was not released, sat down in her first period class when she and her friends heard a pop from the iPhone.
Jeff Rodman, the school’s principal, spoke to The Sentinel about the incident.
"Immediately, smoke starts billowing from around the student,” he said. “She knew right away something was wrong and, in a panic, knew her pants were on fire caused by the cellphone.”
The girl had to take off the pants, while the other girls in the class shooed the boys out of the room and called for a teacher’s assistance. Eventually, teachers came to help, wrapping the girl in a blanket and waited for rescue workers and firefighters to arrive. The girl suffered from second-degree burns on her leg and back, and was immediately treated at a nearby hospital.
The iPhone uses a lithium-ion type rechargeable battery that generates heat through a chemical reaction as it charges and discharges. There haven’t been many reports of phone fires, but those incidents occurred while the phone was charging and not in idle mode. So chances are this was a very rare situation.
[via The Morning Sentinel]
