Photograph by William Hook
A teenage girl in Maine, US, was burned after her iPhone caught fire whilst in her pocket.
A girl at Middle School of the Kennebunks sat down to class at around 07:40 on Friday when she heard a “pop” in her back pocket. Her classmates then reported to Seacoast Online that she fell to the floor and rolled around trying to take off her trousers. Students tried to help her and a teacher grabbed a blanket, with the girl then rushed to Southern Maine Health Care Center and treated for “moderate burns”.
The cause of the burns is said to be the girl’s iPhone, which photographs suggest caught fire and melted the case surrounding it.
The school principal, Jeff Rodman, told Seacoast Online:
“It was something that I don’t think people had ever seen before. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
This is not the first report of mobile phones catching fire, with iPhones and Android phones being reported to have caught fire on aeroplanes and on nightstands. With more than 1.5 billion smartphones in people’s hands across the world, even with the highest measures of quality control there is always going to be a chance of a small fault in the battery or elsewhere.
